Surveying the hermit crab housing market
Students will answer questions based on the Science News article "Hermit crabs are drawn to the dead."
Educator Guide: Hermit Crabs Are Drawn to the Dead
To keep growing, hermit crabs (Coenobita compressus, shown) must move into bigger and bigger shells.
M. LAIDRE
About this guide
Hermit crabs are drawn to the smell of flesh from one of their own, Science News reports in “Hermit crabs are drawn to the dead.” In experiments on a beach in Costa Rica, land-dwelling hermit crabs swarmed plastic bottles containing crab flesh. The scent of the flesh signals the death of a hermit crab and thus is a cue that an empty shell — a limited resource for land-dwelling crabs — is available.
This Guide Includes:
Move into a hermit crab’s shell
These discussion prompts connect concepts including energy, competition, adaptation, speciation, natural selection and chemical and physical changes to a real-world example.
Getting source savvy
Students will explore similarities and differences in how scientific research is reported in a journalistic article versus a primary research paper.
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