Metabolic rates in the squareback marsh crab Armases cinereum

Metabolic rate is a basic individual metric that extends beyond the individual to link the ecology of populations, communities, and ecosystems via its role as a central component of energy budgets. Metabolic rates are often measured indirectly by quantifying respiration under simplified, standard laboratory conditions. This approach limits the application of these measurements to a small range of conditions that commonly do not reflect natural field conditions. We measured metabolic rates of the squareback marsh crab Armases cinereum under field conditions. Previous work highlights that movement of individual A. cinereum, especially females, provides a potential spatial subsidy of energy, as individuals consume foods in salt marshes and then transfer the resulting energy to upland forest ecosystems. We show that metabolic rate increases with size for both males and females and that metabolic rates are influenced by temperature and by whether females are vitellogenic. The metabolic rates that we measured more closely approximate field metabolic rates than standard metabolic rates and demonstrate that individual crabs experience high energy expenditures, reducing the amount of energy that may be transferred as a subsidy between marsh and forest as a result of the daily movements of individual crabs. Our measurements are therefore also a key component for the construction of an energy budget for this species.