Having established that the environment variables, clams and background prey are behaving reasonably relative to what is known empirically, we now examine particular life-history attributes of the model crabs. As before, the particular assessment conditions established above become the experimental conditions that must be met between the two systems so that the behaviors of crabs can be meaningfully compared.
Blue crabs have even more behaviors that need to be assessed than clams or the background prey. The groups of criteria focused on include individual crab growth and molting; spawning and recruitment; movement, density and spatial distribution; rates of aggression and starvation; and finally the sensitivity of rates of aggression to the particular model assumptions made. All of these behaviors depend on the way in which a crab interacts and responds to its local environmental variables, prey, and other crabs. For example, properties like the time to reach sexual maturity are the result of the interaction between algorithms governing crab feeding, metabolism, molting, and movement - all of which are affected by the crab's environment.