Skip to main content
Advertisement

Main menu

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Accepted manuscripts
    • Issue in progress
    • Latest complete issue
    • Issue archive
    • Archive by article type
    • Special issues
    • Subject collections
    • Interviews
    • Sign up for alerts
  • About us
    • About JEB
    • Editors and Board
    • Editor biographies
    • Travelling Fellowships
    • Grants and funding
    • Journal Meetings
    • Workshops
    • The Company of Biologists
    • Journal news
  • For authors
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Aims and scope
    • Presubmission enquiries
    • Article types
    • Manuscript preparation
    • Cover suggestions
    • Editorial process
    • Promoting your paper
    • Open Access
    • Outstanding paper prize
    • Biology Open transfer
  • Journal info
    • Journal policies
    • Rights and permissions
    • Media policies
    • Reviewer guide
    • Sign up for alerts
  • Contacts
    • Contact JEB
    • Subscriptions
    • Advertising
    • Feedback
    • Institutional usage stats (logged-in users only)
  • COB
    • About The Company of Biologists
    • Development
    • Journal of Cell Science
    • Journal of Experimental Biology
    • Disease Models & Mechanisms
    • Biology Open

User menu

  • Log in

Search

  • Advanced search
Journal of Experimental Biology
  • COB
    • About The Company of Biologists
    • Development
    • Journal of Cell Science
    • Journal of Experimental Biology
    • Disease Models & Mechanisms
    • Biology Open

supporting biologistsinspiring biology

Journal of Experimental Biology

  • Log in
Advanced search

RSS  Twitter  Facebook  YouTube  

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Accepted manuscripts
    • Issue in progress
    • Latest complete issue
    • Issue archive
    • Archive by article type
    • Special issues
    • Subject collections
    • Interviews
    • Sign up for alerts
  • About us
    • About JEB
    • Editors and Board
    • Editor biographies
    • Travelling Fellowships
    • Grants and funding
    • Journal Meetings
    • Workshops
    • The Company of Biologists
    • Journal news
  • For authors
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Aims and scope
    • Presubmission enquiries
    • Article types
    • Manuscript preparation
    • Cover suggestions
    • Editorial process
    • Promoting your paper
    • Open Access
    • Outstanding paper prize
    • Biology Open transfer
  • Journal info
    • Journal policies
    • Rights and permissions
    • Media policies
    • Reviewer guide
    • Sign up for alerts
  • Contacts
    • Contact JEB
    • Subscriptions
    • Advertising
    • Feedback
    • Institutional usage stats (logged-in users only)
INSIDE JEB
Mantis shrimp fine-tune ballistic blows
Kathryn Knight
Journal of Experimental Biology 2019 222: jeb203356 doi: 10.1242/jeb.203356 Published 4 April 2019
Kathryn Knight
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: kathryn.knight@biologists.com
  • Article
  • Figures & tables
  • Info & metrics
  • PDF
Loading
Figure1
  • Download figure
  • Open in new tab
  • Download powerpoint

Two mantis shrimp fight over access to a burrow. Photo credit: Roy Caldwell.

Mantis shrimp are feisty little beasts. Fiercely defending their burrows against interlopers, the aggressive crustaceans determinedly bludgeon each other's tails with their hammer-like raptorial appendages until the loser retreats. And when it comes to smashing dinner, the creatures pulverise the shells of snails and crabs to dine on the sweet meat within. But how much effort does it take a spirited shrimp to retain its supremacy, and, more to the point, can they fine-tune how hard they thwack trespassers and tea alike?

‘I am interested in how animals adjust their use of energy to achieve different tasks’, says Patrick Green, from Duke University, USA, adding that the trade-off between exertion and outcome often determines how particular individuals behave. Knowing that Sheila Patek, also from Duke, and Matt McHenry, from the University of California, Irvine, USA, had built a computer simulation that allows them to calculate the energy released by a mantis shrimp's explosive hammer-like blows, Green decided to put the hungry and combative creatures through their paces to find out whether they tweak their blows depending on the context.

‘There's very little danger in working with these mantis shrimp. While powerful, they're still very small and being struck doesn't really hurt’, says Green, recalling collecting the weeny creatures from the seagrass beds off the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s Galeta Marine Laboratory in Panama. After returning to Duke, Green filmed the crustaceans’ contests over burrows and when dining. ‘Mantis shrimp are highly territorial’, says Green, recalling how the animals easily came to blows when their burrows were nestled against each other. ‘What was more difficult was getting them to eat’, he recalls, adding, ‘Sometimes, a shrimp would jam its snail into a corner of its burrow and start striking away, but all of these strikes would be useless to me, because the angle relative to the camera was off’. Green recorded the duels and snail assaults at 40,000 frames s−1, and then painstakingly digitized the hammer swipes and calculated the speed and energy of each movement.

Impressively, when he compared the speed and strike energies, it was clear that the animals fine-tuned their blows, depending on whether they were engaged in combat or simply trying to open a snack. Larger mantis shrimp were able to deliver more energy in their blows when competing for a burrow than smaller assailants, and Green suggests that this increase may ‘signal larger body size to an opponent’. However, when it came to smashing a snail, the smallest mantis shrimp dealt faster blows than the larger crustaceans, suggesting that the larger animals may only be striking with as much energy as they need to open their snail suppers. Green also calculated how much the mantis shrimp were compressing the spring that fires off their ballistic blows, and it was clear that the animals that struck the most energetic blows compressed the spring most. ‘This tells us… how animals with spring-powered movements can achieve variations in those movements’, says Green. He also determined whether the crustaceans tweak how much energy they pack into the blows that they deliver to opponents, and it appears that they do, suggesting that they may be able to gauge how powerful an adversary is.

So, mantis shrimp can adjust the speed and energy of their strikes depending on their size and at what they aim their blows. And, having discovered that the crustaceans can adjust the scale of an attack, Green is now eager to learn how they judge opponents and prey to fine-tune their assaults.

  • © 2019. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd

References

    1. Green, P. A.,
    2. McHenry, M. J. and
    3. Patek, S. N.
    (2019). Context-dependent scaling of kinematics and energetics during contests and feeding in mantis shrimp. J. Exp. Biol. 222, jeb198085. doi:10.1242/jeb.198085
    OpenUrlAbstract/FREE Full Text
Previous ArticleNext Article
Back to top
Previous ArticleNext Article

This Issue

 Download PDF

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on Journal of Experimental Biology.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Mantis shrimp fine-tune ballistic blows
(Your Name) has sent you a message from Journal of Experimental Biology
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the Journal of Experimental Biology web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
INSIDE JEB
Mantis shrimp fine-tune ballistic blows
Kathryn Knight
Journal of Experimental Biology 2019 222: jeb203356 doi: 10.1242/jeb.203356 Published 4 April 2019
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
INSIDE JEB
Mantis shrimp fine-tune ballistic blows
Kathryn Knight
Journal of Experimental Biology 2019 222: jeb203356 doi: 10.1242/jeb.203356 Published 4 April 2019

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Alerts

Please log in to add an alert for this article.

Sign in to email alerts with your email address

Article navigation

  • Top
  • Article
    • References
  • Figures & tables
  • Info & metrics
  • PDF

Related articles

Cited by...

More in this TOC section

  • Wing damage no obstacle for hummingbird hawkmoths
  • Making a difference: the role of comparative biology in tackling climate change
  • Lifestyle difference gives female yellow-billed hornbills the edge
Show more INSIDE JEB

Similar articles

Other journals from The Company of Biologists

Development

Journal of Cell Science

Disease Models & Mechanisms

Biology Open

Advertisement

Welcome to JEB’s new Editor Monica Daley

We are pleased to welcome Monica Daley to JEB’s Editorial team. Monica has had a long association with JEB before taking up her new role, overseeing peer review of neuromuscular physiology, terrestrial biomechanics and integrative physiology of locomotion.


In the field with Robyn Hetem

Continuing our fieldwork series, Robyn Hetem reflects on working with species ranging from aardvark to zebra, and the impact COVID-19 has had on fieldwork.


Read & Publish participation continues to grow

“It is particularly encouraging for early career researchers, as it allows them to display their research globally without the need to find costs to cover the open access option.”

Professor Fernando Montealegre-Z (University of Lincoln) shares his experience of publishing Open Access as part of our growing Read & Publish initiative. We now have over 150 institutions in 15 countries and four library consortia taking part – find out more and view our full list of participating institutions.


Nocturnal reef residents have deep-sea-like eyes

Fanny de Busserolles and colleagues from The University of Queensland have discovered that the eyes of nocturnal reef fish have multibank retinas, layers of photoreceptors, similar to the eyes of deep-sea fish that live in dim light conditions.


Mechanisms underlying gut microbiota–host interactions in insects

In their Review, Konstantin Schmidt and Philipp Engel summarise recent findings about the mechanisms involved in gut colonisation and the provisioning of beneficial effects in gut microbiota–insect symbiosis.

Articles

  • Accepted manuscripts
  • Issue in progress
  • Latest complete issue
  • Issue archive
  • Archive by article type
  • Special issues
  • Subject collections
  • Interviews
  • Sign up for alerts

About us

  • About JEB
  • Editors and Board
  • Editor biographies
  • Travelling Fellowships
  • Grants and funding
  • Journal Meetings
  • Workshops
  • The Company of Biologists
  • Journal news

For Authors

  • Submit a manuscript
  • Aims and scope
  • Presubmission enquiries
  • Article types
  • Manuscript preparation
  • Cover suggestions
  • Editorial process
  • Promoting your paper
  • Open Access
  • Outstanding paper prize
  • Biology Open transfer

Journal Info

  • Journal policies
  • Rights and permissions
  • Media policies
  • Reviewer guide
  • Sign up for alerts

Contact

  • Contact JEB
  • Subscriptions
  • Advertising
  • Feedback

 Twitter   YouTube   LinkedIn

© 2021   The Company of Biologists Ltd   Registered Charity 277992