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What is the life cycle of a horseshoe crab?

Updated: 10/6/2023
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Jetdude115

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15y ago

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The common species of crayfish (crawfish) live about 2 or 3 years, but individuals may live to be as old as 8 years. Some rare species can live as long as 20 years.

After reaching 2 years of age, they have usually grown fairly large and have difficulty creating larger shells beyond a certain size. Each new molting makes them more vulnerable to predators.

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13y ago
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12y ago

When lobsters hatch from eggs, they emerge as a nauplius (plural nauplii), a larval life stage. They will then molt into a zoea, the second larval life stage. There are three zoeal life stages. All of these life stages are planktonic. That is, the tiny young lobster spends all his time in the water column near the surface and is not capable of any purposeful swimming. They will then molt into the fifth life stage, a megalopa, which is a transitional stage that prepares the lobster for life on the sea bottom. This might take up to 20 days. After he settles on the bottom, he is pretty much a small version of an adult lobster, with a total length of only about an inch. He will normally take about 6-8 years to get up to a pound, which is the normal size of lobster you will see in the market. But he is sexually mature and capable of reproducing within 4 or 5 years. At this time, he will mate with a female lobster, and the whole cycle begins again.

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15y ago

Like a turtle the horseshoe crabs go onto the beach to lay their eggs. The male hooks onto the tail of the female to feryilize them once theyve been laid. A hole is dug (around 6 inches deep) into which the eggs are deposited. Upto 100,000 eggs can be laid but only fertilized eggs become embryos. the embro grow into larve in about 3 weeks and start crawling out of the sand once they "sense" the full moon tide. they are still not fully developed and have to feed on the egg yolk still inside them until their digestive tract is fully formed. It takes 10 years or so for the "carb to fully form and they molt many times during those years. They can live to be 15-20 years old. -hope this helped H.B. Conners

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15y ago

the life cycle of the crawfish is still to this day notdiscoverd the life cycle of the crawfish is still to this day notdiscoverd the life cycle of the crawfish is still to this day notdiscoverd

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13y ago

Most shrimp mature and breed only in a marine habitat, although there are a small number of freshwater species. The females lay 50,000 to 1 million eggs at a time, which hatch after a couple of days into tiny nauplii. These nauplii feed on yolk reserves within their body then undergo metamorphosis into zoeae. This second larval stage feeds in the wild on algae and after a few days metamorphoses again into the third stage to become myses. At this stage the myses already begin to appear like tiny versions of fully developed adults and feed on algae and plankton. After another three to four days they metamorphose a final time into postlarvae: young shrimp having all the characteristics of adults. The whole process takes about 12 days from hatching. In the wild, the marine postlarvae then migrate into estuaries, which are rich in nutrients and low in salinity. There they grow and eventually migrate back into open waters when they mature.

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7y ago

The parents lay eggs. The eggs hatch into small crabs. Then they grow up and the life cycle keeps going.

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14y ago

Well as far as I know a hermit crab kept as a pet can live as long as 30 years. A hermit crab in the wild can live as long as 50 years.

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8y ago

It is just egg-hatchling-adult.

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Q: What is the life cycle of a horseshoe crab?
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