One of my hermits is in berry (as they say with female shrimps carrying eggs) and the crab who has the eggs is um... my supposed male: Rice. Rice is the crab that was supposedly the father last year, and has no visible gonopores on his/her third leg segments. I have females(?) with very visible gonopores, so now I am totally confused. Last year I never saw any of the eggs on the crabs, and now this is explained: I never thought to check my supposed male for the eggs! I checked the supposed females. Maybe gonopores aren't indicators as I previously assumed. I never thought to check Rice for the long egg-carrying appendages (pleopods) because I assumed she was a he. Maybe pleopods are the only way to tell? All my crab sexing assumptions are shattered... is Rice an oddity that does not fit the standard- or are all the sexing methods fallible?
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