Coral Reef Decline Could Threaten Survival of Crabs, Lobsters

Crabs and lobsters might go extinct due to the declining abundance of coral reefs. A new study has found that prehistoric crustaceans were wiped out after reefs began collapsing. Researchers say that a similar fate awaits modern crustaceans that now depend of coral reefs for survival.

The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Florida and showed a direct co-relation between prehistoric reefs and decapod crustaceans, a group that includes shrimps, crabs and lobsters.

"We estimate that earth's decapod crustacean species biodiversity plummeted by more than 50 percent during a sharp decline of reefs nearly 150 million years ago, which was marked by the extinction of 80 percent of crabs. If reefs continue to decline at the current rate during this century, then a few thousand species of decapods are in real danger. They may adapt to a new environment without reefs, migrate to entirely new environments or, more likely, go extinct," Klompmaker said in a news release.

Coral reefs provide food and shelter to many marine organisms, which is why they are sometimes called rainforests of the ocean. The reefs are made by certain algae and coral polyps. And, although they account for less than 1 percent of the entire ocean floor, they harbor about 25 percent of all marine life.

Global warming and sedimentation can destroy about 30 percent of all coral reefs in the next three decades, according to the National Geographic.

In the present study, researchers created a database of all available fossils records of marine life from the Mesozoic Era- a period between 252 million to 66 million years ago. In all, there were 110 families, 378 genera and 1,298 species in the database.

The scientists found that the population of crustaceans co-related with the abundance of coral reefs. Researchers said that this period was the "Mesozoic decapod revolution" as there was a 300-fold increase in species diversity during this period. This was also the time when crabs appeared in oceans.

"This new work builds a good case for the role of reefs in promoting the evolutionary diversification of crustaceans. We have to take their argument for the flipside of that story very seriously. The positive relation between reefs and crustaceans implies that the damage caused to reefs by human activities - from overfishing to ocean acidification - is likely to have cascading consequences for associated groups, including crustaceans,"  said David Jablonski, a paleontologist in the department of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago in a news release. Jablonski wasn't part of the current study.

The study is published in the journal Geology.