Burrow Morphology of the Ocypodid Crab Ocypode ceratophthalma at Chandipur Coast, Eastern India and its Implications

Several burrow morphological features of crab Ocypode ceratophthalma including burrow diameter, orientation, inclination, branching and volume were studied from Chandipur, a sedimentologically and biologically diverse beach on the eastern Indian coast. Burrow morphologies (e.g. I, J, Y) were independent of their positions with respect to the coast line. In ad-dition, no correlation between burrow morphology and burrow diameter was observed; however, diame-ter of burrow appeared to be a good proxy of the total amount of sediment excavated. Burrow diameters are significantly smaller in the foreshore compared to that of the backshore, suggesting that larger individuals reside along the backshore, where they excavate deep-er and large-diameter burrows to minimize chances of desiccation. Smaller burrows are more or less ver-tical, whereas larger burrows are inclined towards the land, probably to stabilize their domicile from tidal activities, as well as to minimize energy required to excavate sediments. All these suggest that different types of abiotic factors determine the Ocypode burrow morphology and their habitat segregation.