Abstract:
Marine crabs play an integral role in the food chain and scavenge the debris in the ecosystem. Gradual increases
in global atmospheric carbon dioxide cause ocean acidification (OA) and global warming that leads to severe
consequences for marine organisms including crabs. Also, OA combined with other stressors like temperature,
hypoxia, and heavy metals causes more severe adverse effects in marine crabs. The present review was made
holistic discussion of information from 111 articles, of which 37 peer-reviewed original research papers reported
on the effect of OA experiments and its combination with other stressors like heavy metals, temperature, and
hypoxia on growth, survival, molting, chitin quality, food indices, tissue biochemical constituents, hemocytes
population, and biomarker enzymes of marine crabs. Nevertheless, the available reports are still in the infancy of
marine crabs, hence, this review depicts the possible gaps and future research needs on the impact of OA on
marine crabs.