Dear Chris,Why not, they are wonderful things! We work on neuroendocrine (hormones produced by the nervous system) mechanisms involved in moulting and reproduction. Might seem esoteric, but we all have hormones! Seriously, we understand little about these things, and many of you would be surprised to know the value of shrimp and crab farming worlwide- billions of dollars! The main problem is that most species of commercially exploited shrimp, ie what you might buy as Tiger Prawns in the supermarket, do not breed in captivity,they just sulk and get stressed, hence impregnated, mature females have to be captured from the wild, which involves a lot of destructive trawling, and of course, unless the life cycle can be "closed" in captivity, these wild caught prawns will introduce viral diseases to aquaculture. (Once a viral disease is established, most farmers just move on, and since much of the farming is done in mangrove regions, new farms just bulldoze out the mangroves and start again- not very environmentally friendly.....) Each one of these wild caught "mother prawns" can spawn many millions of fertilised eggs, so are quite highly prized- over 1000 dollars per prawn, so you can imagine the damage that can be caused in the areas they exist, particularly when you consider the average wage of most of South East Asia- where many species of prawn live. So, by studying the hormones involved in these processes (moulting and reproduction), in a much more prosaic but robust model animal such as a crab, we hope to identify the hormonally critical steps which result in "blocks" in ovarian development in crustaceans, and specifically, prawns. The hormones involved in both cab and prawn moulting and reproduction are essentially related- indeed they are surprisingly similar, but the problem is that prawns are very delicate, expensive, and are not (for a number of reasons) amenable to the sort of research we need to do- hence crabs! On another note, many of the hormones we work on have counterparts in insects, thus we have a potentially "environmentally friendly" handle on pest control by species-specific hormone disruption, rather than using pesticides here as well. Finally, we all have counterparts of crab hormones in our brains- what do they do?- We don't know. (No jokes about walking sideways please!). Have I justified my existence, and job? Simon.