“…low tide period) by providing water reserve and refuge from predators (Warren, 1990;Thongtham and Kristensen, 2003). In Madagascar, S. serrata is an important economic resource for local communities (Lebigre, 1987) who traditionally catch them in their burrows during low tide, consequently they have been under increasing fishing pressure for the last decades (Fondo et al, 2010). While the biology and ecology of mud crabs have already been well studied (Alberts-Hubatsch et al, 2016), little is known about the factors influencing the distribution of populations along environmental gradients (Dumas et al, 2012).…”