They contribute to the aeration of soil around marsh grasses, and thus support their growth, and stimulate the turnover of important nutrients in the soil. Fiddlers additionally play an important role in the food web by providing food for many other large predators, including blue crabs, colonial waterbirds such as egrets and herons and small mammals such as raccoons. Habitat and Life Cycle Fiddlers dig temporary burrows to protect themselves from predators during feeding, but they dig more permanent burrows for mating and sleeping, which often are tidier and more elaborate, and which they defend. The burrows may connect with others through tunnels. When feeding, fiddlers may skip into the nearest available burrow to escape predation, or dig a quick temporary burrow.
All burrows provide shade during the hottest parts of the day and are refuges during high tide.
Fiddlers will roll up a small amount of mud and plug up their burrow's opening during high tide, trapping a small pocket of air. Unlike blue crabs, fiddlers obtain their oxygen from the atmosphere. They have gills, however, which must be kept wet to remain functional. In winter fiddlers stay in their burrows in a form of hibernation, and the following spring reappear from their submerged homes on the flats in droves. In summer, fiddlers tend to breed about every two weeks.