To inform a community-based ocean zoning initiative, we conducted an intensive ecological assessment of the marine ecosystems of Barbuda, West Indies. We conducted 116 fish and 108 benthic surveys around the island, and measured the abundance and size structure of lobsters and conch at 52 and 35 sites, respectively. We found that both coral cover and fish biomass were similar to or lower than l...

Operant conditioning is a common tool for studying cognitive aspects of brain functions. As the first step toward understanding those functions in simple invertebrate microbrains, we tested whether operant conditioning could be applied to train American lobster Homarus americanus that has been extensively adopted as an animal model for neurophysiological analyses of nervous system functions and...

An outbreak of shell disease in American lobster (Homarus americanus) over the past several years has generated a great deal of attention and concern regarding its causes and spread into New England coastal waters. An examination of the disease within Massachusetts state waters was conducted from 2000 through 2004. The overall average incidence observed in our data was 3% males and 8% females. ...

The family of all independent k-sets a graph containing fixed vertex v is called star and its center. Stars are interesting for their relation to Erdős–Ko–Rado graphs. Hurlbert Kamat conjectured that in trees the largest stars centered leaves. This conjecture was disproven independently by Baber, Borg, Feghali, Johnson, Thomas. In this paper we introduce tool bound size at certain vertices We u...

Spiny lobsters rely on multiple biomineralized exoskeletal predator defenses that may be sensitive to ocean acidification (OA). Compromised mechanical integrity of these defensive structures tilt predator-prey outcomes, leading increased mortality in the lobsters’ environment. Here, we tested effects OA-like conditions selected juvenile California spiny lobster, Panulirus interruptus . Young re...

Squat lobsters from Australia, east Africa, Taiwan, Philippines and the Norfolk Ridge (southwestern Pacific) previously identified as Agononida incerta (Henderson, 1888) are redescribed as four new species in addition to the original: A. africerta, A. auscerta, A. indocerta and A. norfocerta. A. rubrizonata Macpherson & Baba, 2009, also earlier confused with this species, is redescribed. All si...

Caribbean spiny lobsters display a diversity of social behaviors, one of the most prevalent of which is gregarious diurnal sheltering. Previous research has demonstrated that shelter selection is chemically mediated, but the source of release and the identity of the aggregation signal are unknown. In this study, we investigated the source and specificity of the aggregation signal in Caribbean s...

The larvae or phyllosomes of many species of spiny lobsters (Palinuridae) are known to complete their development in offshore oceanic waters. Phyllosomes metamorphose to non-feeding, nektonic post-larvae or pueruli, which move into shallow coastal waters where they settle to become benthic dwelling juveniles. There is growing evidence that the movement of pueruli is directed toward the coast ra...

Eighteen American lobsters (Homarus americanus), dead during air transport, were analysed in order to evaluate the microbial population of meat, gills and gut: no specific studies have ever been conducted so far on the microbiological quality of American lobsters' meats in terms of spoilage microbiota. The meat samples showed very limited total viable counts, in almost all the cases below the l...