UF researchers received a $1 million grant to study why blue crabs are dying.
Scientists with the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences received a three-year grant to study a viral pathogen, the CsRV1 virus, that has caused the blue crab population to drop. UF received the grant from the National Science Foundation on July 1.
Donald Behringer, an associate professor at IFAS in the Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences Program, and his colleagues will study how diseases move through the crab population.
The researchers will use a pathogen host to examine how diseases are able to hop from crab to crab across large ocean areas. Eric Schott, an assistant research professor at the University of Maryland’s Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology, wrote in an email that researchers take genetic material from the crabs and use it to study the virus.
“We can detect as little as one copy of the virus in a small hemolymph (blood) sample from the crab,” Schott said.
Schott said data from his lab shows at least 20 percent of blue crabs along the East Coast and in Chesapeake Bay have the CsRV1 virus, creating a large impact on the crab population.
Schott said researchers will use computer models to help their study and will conduct field experiments where they track and tag wild crabs.
Behringer said researchers study types of blue crabs with slight genetic differences. Blue crabs that live from Maine to North Carolina go dormant in the winter, but those living in the southern hemisphere stay active all year long. Behringer said there are slight differences in the virus based on the crab’s type and location.
The research team will look at differences in climate, latitude and oceanographic conditions to figure out why these crabs are contracting the virus, Behringer said.
“We are going to be asking how a crab’s life history would drive this pathogen,” said Behringer.
