There are two species of squareback crabs in Sapelo
saltmarshes, Sesarma reticulatum (shown below) and
Armases cinereum. S. reticulatum lives throughout
the vegetated marsh, and A. cinereum lives in the marsh at
its upper edge, and ventures up into the maritime terrestrial zone.
Characteristically-structured fecal pellets of squarebacks (both
species?) have been regularly found on standing-decaying leaf
blades of smooth cordgrass (Newell and Graça, unpublished),
and it is suspected that squarebacks may be invertebrate sinks for
marshgrass-fungal mass. At the time of this writing, the crab in
this picture had been living on standing-decaying cordgrass blades
as its only food for seven months. See Newell & Porter, 1999,
in Weinstein & Kreeger, Concepts and Controversies in Tidal
Marsh Ecology, Kluwer.