Georgia Tech researcher Dr. Marc Weissburg is examining the role of the peripheral nervous system in producing sex-specific behavior in fiddler crabs. Researchers base their conclusion on physiological and behavioral experiments that artificially reproduced sexually distinct behaviors in male marsh fiddler crabs by transplanting them with the limbs of female fiddler crabs. Ongoing experiments are investigating whether the same phenomena occurs when male limbs are transplanted onto females. He will present his research, funded by the National Institutes of Health , on Nov. 10 at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Los Angeles. If he can determine how invertebrates regenerate neural tissue that functions successfully, Weissburg believes other researchers may some day be able to apply those findings to stimulate regeneration in vertebrates, including humans, he said.
Females have two feeding claws, which are more sensitive than the male feeding claw.
Males have one feeding claw and a larger claw that is used for defense and for signaling mating cues. Weissburg and his research team transplanted a developing female feeding claw onto males in place of their defense claw with a 20 percent success rate, which was surprisingly high, he said. This resulted in a sample size of more than 80 animals to date. Physiological experiments that recorded the electrical activity of the transplanted claw show it contained chemical sensors that respond to stimuli, as would any feeding claw. Behavioral studies stimulated the transplanted claw with various agents.