Identifier Profile: @eijimyorin

This is the nineteenth entry in an ongoing monthly (or almost monthly!) series profiling the amazing identifiers of iNaturalist. We thought we'd share it on LinkedIn!

The other week, I chose @eijimyorin’s Pagurus japonicus hermit crab as the Observation of the Day. When I checked out his profile, I saw that he’s a hermit crab expert who’s making his way through all hermit crab observations on iNat (currently about 60,000 total) and giving them a reappraisal. I wanted to learn more about this so I reached out to him about being featured in the iNat blog.

“I have a particular respect for hermit crabs,” says Eiji Myorin, a researcher at the Kuroshio Biological Research Institute in Japan.?

They are very intelligent and I consider them to be representatives of “tool-using creatures.” The tool is the shell that is their home. They also know that when they find a new shell, they can move the sand out of it by rolling the right-facing shell to the left. Some hermit crabs also attach anemones to their shells to protect themselves from outside enemies.

Eiji’s other area of research, which he calls his day job, is coral photochemistry.?

I make optical measurements of corals to determine what fluorescent proteins they have, make optical measurements in the ocean to determine the light requirements of corals, and design LED lighting to reproduce them.?

He likes identifying hermit crabs on iNaturalist for two main reasons:

First, I like to communicate with the observer and provide he or she more information about the observation. This will increase the accuracy of the person's future identifications and allow me to advise other novices.

I also correct the identification and provide information to make the records useful to others in the future.

As for identification resources, he relies mostly on internet image searches and scientific publications, but is building his own Hermit Crab Visual Dictionary for Japanese hermit crabs, a continuing endeavor which he calls “my life's work at this point.”?

Since I don’t like killing creatures, I am trying to avoid the method of identifying specimens by killing hermit crabs, and am working hard to establish identification information to be able to judge them based on ecological photographs as much as possible, and to promote this method. My hope is that the general public will then be able to identify hermit crabs without the need to kill them.

[In the process of creating the website,] I sometimes find new species, in which case I ask a specialist to write a paper on them. I am mainly engaged in observing their ecology and securing specimens of new species.

There are still many undescribed species of hermit crabs registered in iNat, and all the data on rare hermit crabs, including such records, are my favorite. For example, I have observed Clibanarius ransoni, which is native to Indonesia and sometimes washes ashore in Japan, but I first learned about an undescribed species with blue eyes similar to Clibanarius ransoni in India, which I first learned about through iNat. Such discoveries are one of the enjoyments of iNat.

(Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.)

Found a hermit crab? Here are some photography tips for making an identifiable iNat observation:

Carefully observe the color and pattern of the eyes, antennae, pincers, and legs. Each part of the body often has a distinctive color and pattern, so you need to be careful not to miss them.

Also, many iNat users hold hermit crabs in their hands and photograph them in the air, which makes it difficult to identify them because the colors and shapes are different from their original features due to the reflection of water droplets and hairs sticking to the body. Therefore, I recommend photographing hermit crabs underwater, if possible, and using those photos as a basis for identification.

by Tony Iwane