Its trade name is bulldozer shrimp, and the arithmetic is worth doing.
A burrowing alpheid pushes several loads of sediment out of its hole every minute during working hours, every day, for years. Studies that have bothered to weigh it put a single burrow's output in the kilograms per year, and a sand flat carries burrows every half meter. The whole layer gets turned, aerated and mixed by shrimp, and the animals that eat the things living in that sediment depend on it staying loose.
What it looks like underwater is a shrimp reversing out of a hole with a bulldozer blade of sand in front of it, pushing it clear, and going straight back in. It does this while nearly blind, with a goby standing sentry at the door.
This is the species that partners the gorgeous shrimpgoby on this coast, pale with fine orange-brown stripes. It also spent years in the literature under the wrong name, as Alpheus thompsoni, which is worth knowing if you go looking for it in older books.
- pale body with fine orange-brown stripes along its length
- constantly pushing loads of sand out of a burrow entrance
- one enlarged snapping claw
- up to 5 cm
