This spring, Horseshoe crabs will arrive on beaches along the east coast of the United States to mate and to lay their eggs. It’s a spring ritual they’ve carried out since the age of the dinosaurs. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History.
A Horseshoe crab looks a bit like an oblong armored shield dragging a spiny tail. It has a relatively simple structure that’s well suited for a whole range of marine environments and foods.
John Tanacredi is Chief of Natural Resources at Gateway National Recreation Area, in New York.
“It’s the simplicity of the design of the Horseshoe crab as you compare it to organisms that have gone extinct. Their complexity made them very, very specialized in their habitat.”
There is a danger for any organism to become too specialized in a specific environment.
“The greater the specialization, the greater the probability that if things dramatically change in your environment and you can’t adapt to those changes or move away from those changes then they will place you in such stress that may very well be catastrophic for your survival. And that is at least what is thought about what had happened to organisms like the trilobites or to the dinosaurs, dramatic changes in where they could not adapt to those changes.”
Scientists suspect that the ability to live in a variety of habitats has been the key to the Horseshoe crab’s survival over the last 300 million years.
We’d like to hear about the way that you observe or celebrate the seasons of your year. Our email address is pulse@igc.org.
Pulse of the Planet is presented by the American Museum of Natural History. Additional funding for this series has been provided by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.