EVALUATING THE IMPACT OF A BARNACLE PARASITE (LOXOTHYLACUS TEXANUS) ON THE PRESERVATION OF BLUE CRABS (CALLINECTES SAPIDUS) WITH EXPERIMENTAL TAPHONOMY

The fossil record of parasitism is poorly understood, often attributed to the scarce fossil record of parasitism, which is highly uneven across taxa, time, and space. Understanding the preservation potential for fossil parasitic evidence is critical to contextualizing the fossil record of parasitism. Rhizocephalan barnacles are common and diverse parasites of decapod crustaceans, but fossil evidence of rhizocephalan barnacles is rare, as well as spatially and temporally restricted, and limited to characteristic traces of infestation on host fossils. Experimental taphonomy has been used for decades to place the short-term post-mortem preservation dynamics of the fossil record within the context of actualistic data of the preservation of modern analogs. Applying experimental taphonomy to rhizocephalan parasites and their hosts is crucial to better understand them in a fossil record context, as well as ultimately disentangling biases from ecological and evolutionary signals in the parasite fossil record. Here, we use experimental tumbling to observe, compare, and contrast taphonomic characteristics between blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus) infested with a rhizocephalan parasite (Loxothylacus texanus), and uninfested blue crabs from the Gulf of Mexico. Normalized taphonomic scores were used to evaluate and compare preservation between infested and uninfested specimens semi-quantitatively.