Which critter decorates the entrance to his home with shells?

[lagomorpheus]

Can anyone identify for me the animal which has meticulously decorated this entrance to his home? Octopus? Shrimp? Never seen this before and can't find any information online.

Carefully-decorated home entrance - ScubaBoard Gallery

Thanks in advance for your suggestions

 

[mala]

i don't think its decoration.
its junk from the hole that the lazy critter has just dumped by the entrance.

 

[djtimmy77]

My guess would be a jawfish.

 

[mala]

gobi?

 

[tracydr]

Crawfish do something similar with pebbles,in freshwater. I once watched for 45 minutes while a crawfish cleaned his home out and placed rocks on the outer edges of his man-cave.

 

[lagomorpheus]

mala, I dunno, Lembeh is mostly black sand; this collection was too obvious and perfect to be random.

I've seen jawfish maintain a burrow and it seems more like spraying sand in an indiscriminate manner. This looks like the work of some kind of anal retentive shrimp in my opinion (ever seen a goby shrimp obsessively rearrange her rocks in front of the burrow?). My first thought was mantis shrimp.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

Mantis shrimp do that as well.

 

[KeithG]

I would go with jawfish over mantis shrimp.

Jawfish have 2 behaviours
- they line their hole with small rocks, shells whatever. This is not just the top rim, but goes down a fair distance. It looks like a well lined with rocks and is normally a little irregular in shape.
- they also clean their hole by taking mouthfuls of sand and spitting it some distance from the hole. The spit sand is not used to make the hole.

Mantis shrimp seem to be able to bore a perfectly round hole in the sandy substrate. There is sometimes some rock or shell rubble at the top rim. Their hole is much more precise than a jawfish hole.

Your picture more closely matches jawfish holes than mantis holes.

 

[Nick A]

Could be an octopus. I've seen many octopi (octopuses?) neatly line the front of their hole with shells or rocks. And many of those were obsessive compulsive about it. You move one and a tentacle would emerge from the hole and put it back exactly like it was before it was moved.

 

[jeangadbois]

Pistol shrimp