Caribbean hermit crab right claw and is purple in color. Female land hermit crabs release fertilized eggs into the ocean. The spawning (called "washing" in the English-speaking Caribbean) occurs on certain nights, usually around August. This species is one of the two land hermit crabs commonly sold in the United States as a pet, the other being the Ecuadorian hermit crab. "C. clypeatus" has been confirmed to live as long as 12 years, and some crab owners have claimed to have crabs live up to 40 years. Caribbean hermit crab The Caribbean hermit crab, Coenobita clypeatus, also known as the soldier crab, the
On the Origin of Species an incipient species" and that "species are only strongly marked and permanent varieties". He argues for the ubiquity of variation in nature. Historians have noted that naturalists had long been aware that the individuals of a species differed from one another, but had generally considered such variations to be limited and unimportant deviations from the archetype of each species, that archetype being a fixed ideal in the mind of God. Darwin and Wallace made variation among individuals of the same species central to understanding the natural world. In Chapter III, Darwin asks how varieties "which I have called incipient species"