---
title: Bearded Coral Crab (Chlorodiella barbata)
scientific_name: Chlorodiella barbata
common_name: Bearded Coral Crab
taxon: Crabs
published: 2025-09-26T15:20:17.811Z
updated: 2026-08-30T10:16:26.180Z
tags: Bearded Coral Crab, Chlorodiella barbata, Crabs, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/crabs/bearded-coral-crab
---

# Bearded Coral Crab (*Chlorodiella barbata*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Crabs (*Brachyura*)
- **Size:** up to 2 cm
- **Depth:** 1-10 m
- **Diet:** Omnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Among the branches of shallow coral heads
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Gonochoric
- **Hazard:** Poisonous

## How to recognise it

- small dark crab with a smooth shell and black-tipped claws
- fringe of fine hair along the legs and the front of the shell
- inside branching coral, especially in shallow surge
- width up to 2 cm

A small dark crab living inside shallow coral heads, fringed along the legs with fine hair that gives it its name.

It is one of the residents of a branching colony rather than one of its guards. Where *Trapezia* and *Tetralia* defend their coral and are rewarded with mucus, this one is a lodger: it takes shelter and eats detritus, algae and whatever the water brings, without doing the coral any particular service.

A single coral head can hold a dozen species living at once on that spectrum - defenders, lodgers, predators and the fish that eat them - which is the reason a colony is worth looking into rather than at.

It tolerates surge better than most, and it is common in the shallow, wave-washed corals where few other crabs bother to live. Two centimeters (0.8 in), and a xanthid, with the family's usual warning against eating anything of the kind.

## Scientific synonyms

- *Chlorodius barbatus* Borradaile, 1900

## Range

Indian Ocean, Madagascar, Mozambique Channel, New Caledonian Exclusive Economic Zone, South Pacific Ocean

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/crabs/bearded-coral-crab)*
*Updated: August 30, 2026*