Abstract
Crabs of the genus Uca Leach, 1814 are characterized by having strong sexual dimorphism and a global distribution. Currently, 97 species have been described and analyzed under several aspects, including population ecology, physiology and ethology. However, there is no general summary of the information from the various literatures. The aim of this study is to perform a scientometric analysis of fiddler crab studies. For this we searched papers available in the Thomson ISI database that contained the words "Uca" OR "fiddler* crab*" between the years 1991 and 2007. For each paper, we researched and recorded the following characteristics: publication year; journal of publication; the first author's nationality; the country where the study was conducted; study type; species studied; and the work area. Our results indicated that there was no increase in the number of articles through the years considered. The Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology published most of the articles on Uca, indicating the importance of this group as a model for testing ecological hypotheses using experimental approaches. Our results also showed that United States had the highest number of authors and published studies on Uca, following the overall trend in dominance on scientific research. Furthermore, using models with three variables (per capita income, number of species of Uca and extent of coastal countries) we observed that, according to the Akaike Information Criterion, the per capita income was the most important correlate for the number of articles per country (both the author's country and country of study). Additionally, our results show that the species U. pugilator (distributed on the East Coast of the North American continent) was the species most singularly referenced in the papers considered. Moreover, our results indicate that most studies on Uca use a descriptive and local scale. The majority of papers in our literature search reflect studies in population biology, followed by behavioral and physiological characteristics.
Highlights
First described in 1758 and since the mid-eighteenth-century many studies have used this taxonomic group in different research fields
The Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology had the largest number of articles (35, or 7.4% of total papers), followed by the Marine Ecology - Progress Series (33 articles, or 7%)
Scientometric studies have often shown an overall increase in the number of research papers over a particular period of time
Summary
A revista que apresentou o maior número de artigos sobre Uca foi o Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, indicando a importância desse grupo como modelo para o teste de hipóteses ecológicas com o uso de abordagem experimental. The aims of our study were: (i) evaluate the trend of the number of papers related to this genus; (ii) determine which species were the most studied; (iii) identify which subject category (areas of study) use Uca as a model organism; and (iv) determine which journals, countries and authors have published more articles on Uca and compare models that explain the pattern of scientific productivity of different countries Based on this assessment, we have identified potential directions for future research on Uca
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