gelasimus

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A genus of short-tailed 10-footed crustaceans, of the family Ocypodidœ the fiddlers, fiddler-crabs, or calling-crabs: so called from their habit of flourishing the odd great claw. The technical characters are: lack of posterior pleurobranchiæ and of anterior arthrobranchiæ, and the two pairs of pleurobranchiæ vestigial. There are several species. G. pugilator abounds in the salt marshes of the southern United States, where it is found in great troops and honeycombs the ground just above high-water mark with innumerable burrows. See calling-crab.