Abstract

Many marine organisms are restricted to habitats which provide essential refuge. Menippe adina, the western Gulf stone crab, depends on patchy hard substrata in the otherwise soft-bottomed Mississippi Sound for individual and population survival. Menippe adina supports small, developing fisheries in Louisiana and Texas, and occurs as an incidental catch in the blue crab fishery in Mississippi and Alabama. Stone crab zoeae, megalopae, and small juveniles (10 - 24 mm carapace width) are relatively abundant in Mississippi Sound and the species does not appear to be recruitment limited. Larger juveniles are less common and their numbers may be related to quantity and quality of suitable habitat. There is strong evidence that refuge limitation exerts control on both population size structure and density of stone crabs. The establishment of low profile reefs in the Mississippi Sound has provided an opportunity for preliminary investigations of refuge limitation in local stone crab populations. Preliminary results indicate that suitable habitat is lacking for juvenile stone crabs and competition for available habitat may be acute between stone crabs and other xanthids (Eurypanopeus depressus, Panopeus simpsoni) as well as the toadfish, Opsanus beta.

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