Abstract

The Grapsidae (Brachyura, Decapoda) family includes 37 crab species, abundant along the coasts (subtidal and intertidal zones) and in mangroves worldwide. Seven genera are defined:Geograpsus, Goniopsis, Grapsus, Leptograpsus, Metopograpsus, Pachygrapsus, and Planes. These crabs have high physiological tolerance to fluctuations of ecological factors and are good accumulators of pollutants. Publications mentioned their use in ecotoxicological investigations in Africa, America, Asia, and Europe. Nevertheless, the studies using these crabs in ecotoxicology were focused on the contents of the chemical compounds (metals, microplastics…) in their tissues and the measure of the antioxidative enzymatic responses. A putative explanation of this underuse in ecotoxicology as model species of grapsids is a low number of sequences of biomarkers characterised and submitted in international databases. Thus, the objective of this study was to promote the use of Grapsidae in ecotoxicology, 1/ indicating the exhaustive state of knowledge on the investigations carried out and 2/ revealing the characterisation of complete coding sequences of forty-five molecular biomarkers involved in distinct cellular pathways (antioxidative response, detoxification system, energy reserves, general stress, immunity, neurotoxicity, and reprotoxicity) specifically in the Pachygrapsus marmoratus transcriptome (Atlantic and Mediterranean species); to give to the scientific research community new dataset to develop molecular investigations (gene expression, molecular evolution…) on this species or to identify in other grapsids (using heterologous primers) same molecular biomarkers.

Keywords:Biomarkers; Ecotoxicology; Grapsidae; Pachygrapsus marmoratus; Sequences