Question for Dr. Caldwell

i was reading , i cant remember if it was one of your posts here, or from the lurker's page, about some of the mantis shrimp being monogamous(hope i spelled that right). i was wondering if any of these species could be kept as a pair in a home aquarium, and if so could recommend a few?

thanks
 
Many of the Lysiosquillids are monogamous. The easiest to get hold of are Lysiosquillina maculata from Hawaii and the Indo-Pacific or L. glabriusculla or Lysiosquilla scabricauda from the Caribbean. They live in burrows and almost never come out, but they sit in the entrance and watch you most of the time. You can also arrange a cut-away burrow with black plastic of the the burrow so that you can watch them brood, molt, etc.

There are also several other smaller species that can pair and live for years in the same burrow. We work on Pullosquilla from Moorea, Bigelowina and Nannosquilla from Florida and Alachosquilla from Australia. However, these would never be commercially available. Too bad, because Pullosquilla and Nannosquilla are really neat because they have true biparental care.

One other problem, however, is that commercial suppliers almost always have only males. The large Lysiosquillids are sexually dimorphic with the males having larger eyes and raptorial appendages and they do most of the hunting from the burrow entrance and are therefore the ones that get caught. The females remain deep in the burrow and the only way to get them is to remove the male and then go back a few days later when she is really hungry and will come up for bait. Or you can did out the entire burrow system which for a big L. m can be 10 m long. The large female that showed up in the Honolulu paper was gotten because they dredged the entire burrow system.

Roy
 
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