Flight or fight: flexible antipredatory strategies in porcelain crabs

Autotomy, the voluntary shedding of limbs or other body parts in the face of predation, is a highly effective escape mechanism that has evolved independently in a variety of taxa. Crabs are unusual in that the limb that is typically sacrificed during autotomy, the anterior clawed cheliped, can also be used to ward off attack. During an encounter with a predator, an individual must thus decide between two mutually exclusive strategies: flight or fight. We used experimental predation encounters with two species of porcelain crabs (genus Petrolisthes) to examine the factors that influence the decision to flee versus fight and to determine the degree to which this decision is context-dependent. We found that autotomy was highly conditional. The characteristics that best predicted autotomy—smaller body size or female gender—also correlated with a lower escape rate by the alternative escape tactic, struggling and pinching the predator. Variation among individuals in the benefit of autotomy (relative to alternative tactics) appears to drive variation in propensity to autotomize. Porcelain crabs thus demonstrate adaptive flexibility, employing the costly strategy of autotomizing a limb as a last resort, only when their chance at success by struggling is low.