Toothed rock crab

Description

Cancer bellianus, the toothed rock crab, is a common species of crab in the north-eastern Atlantic Ocean. It grows up to 130 millimetres (5.1 in) in carapace length, and is pale brown with red spots. Its geographical range extends from near Höfn on the south coast of Iceland (at nearly 64° N) south to Morocco, including the Azores, Madeira and the Canary Islands. It is found at depths from 50 metres (160 ft) to over 730 m (2,400 ft). While the species is sometimes abundant in the south of its range, it is uncommon further north; all the specimens from Brittany and further north were male, and are thought to be recent travellers from further south, rather than representing a stable northern population. C. bellianus is caught as bycatch by artisan fishermen targeting Palinurus elephas, and as much as 10 t can be caught annually. Cancer is a genus of marine crabs in the family Cancridae. It includes eight extant species and three extinct species, including familiar crabs of the littoral zone, such as the European edible crab (Cancer pagurus), the Jonah crab (Cancer borealis) and the red rock crab (Cancer productus). It is thought to have evolved from related genera in the Pacific Ocean in the Miocene. The species placed in the genus Cancer are united by the presence of a single posterolateral spine (on the edge of the carapace, towards the rear), anterolateral spines with deep fissures (on the carapace edge, towards the front), and a short extension of the carapace forward between the eyes. Their claws are typically short, with grainy or smooth, rather than spiny, keels. The carapace is typically oval, being 58%-66% as long as wide, and the eyes separated by 22%-29% of the carapace width. When zoological nomenclature was first standardised by Carl Linnaeus in the 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae, the genus Cancer included almost all crustaceans, including all the crabs. Linnaeus' cumbersome genus was soon divided into more meaningful units, and Cancer had been restricted to one group of true crabs by the time of Pierre André Latreille's 1802 work Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière des Crustacés et des Insectes ("Natural history in general, and specifically that of crustaceans and insects"). Latreille designated C. pagurus to be the type species in 1817.