Mantis shrimp are carnivorous marine crustaceans of the order Stomatopoda. Stomatopods branched off from other members of the class Malacostraca around 340 million years ago. Mantis shrimp typically grow to around 10 cm (3.9 in) in length, while a few can reach up to 38 cm (15 in). A mantis shrimp's carapace covers only the rear part of the head and the first four segments of the thorax. Varieties range in colour from shades of brown to vivid colours, with more than 450 species of mantis shrimp known. They are among the most important predators in many shallow, tropical and subtropical marine habitats. However, despite being common, they are poorly understood, as many species spend most of their lives sheltering in burrows and holes.
Malacostraca is the largest of the six classes of crustaceans, containing about 40,000 living species, divided among 16 orders. Its members, the malacostracans, display a great diversity of body forms and include crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill, prawns, woodlice, amphipods, mantis shrimp, tongue-eating lice and many other less familiar animals. They are abundant in all marine environments and have colonised freshwater and terrestrial habitats. They are segmented animals, united by a common body plan comprising 20 body segments, and divided into a head, thorax, and abdomen.
Eucarida is a superorder of the Malacostraca, a class of the crustacean subphylum, comprising the decapods, krill, Amphionides and Angustidontida. They are characterised by having the carapace fused to all thoracic segments, and by the possession of stalked eyes.
Hoplocarida is a subclass of crustaceans. The only extant members are the mantis shrimp (Stomatopoda), but two other orders existed in the Palaeozoic: Aeschronectida and Palaeostomatopoda.
Eumalacostraca is a subclass of crustaceans, containing almost all living malacostracans, or about 40,000 described species. The remaining subclasses are the Phyllocarida and possibly the Hoplocarida. Eumalacostracans have 19 segments. This arrangement is known as the "caridoid facies", a term coined by William Thomas Calman in 1909. The thoracic limbs are jointed and used for swimming or walking. The common ancestor is thought to have had a carapace, and most living species possess one, but it has been lost in some subgroups.
Cumacea is an order of small marine crustaceans of the superorder Peracarida, occasionally called hooded shrimp or comma shrimp. Their unique appearance and uniform body plan makes them easy to distinguish from other crustaceans. They live in soft-bottoms such as mud and sand, mostly in the marine environment. There are more than 1,500 species of cumaceans formally described. The species diversity of Cumacea increases with depth.
The Bear Gulch Limestone is a limestone-rich geological lens in central Montana, renowned for the quality of its late Mississippian-aged fossils. It is exposed over a number of outcrops northeast of the Big Snowy Mountains, and is often considered a component of the more widespread Heath Formation. The Bear Gulch Limestone reconstructs a diverse, though isolated, marine ecosystem which developed near the end of the Serpukhovian age. It is a lagerstätte, a particular type of rock unit with exceptional fossil preservation of both articulated skeletons and soft tissues. Bear Gulch fossils include a variety of fish, invertebrates, and algae occupying a number of different habitats within a preserved shallow bay.
Falcatus is an extinct genus of falcatid chondrichthyan which lived during the early Carboniferous Period in Bear Gulch bay in what is now Montana.
Lysiosquillina maculata, the zebra mantis shrimp, striped mantis shrimp or razor mantis, is a species of mantis shrimp found across the Indo-Pacific region from East Africa to the Galápagos and Hawaiian Islands. At a length up to 40 cm, L. maculata is the largest mantis shrimp in the world. L. maculata may be distinguished from its congener L. sulcata by the greater number of teeth on the last segment of its raptorial claw, and by the colouration of the uropodal endopod, the distal half of which is dark in L. maculata but not in L. sulcata. A small artisanal fishery exists for this species.
Aenigmacaris is an extinct genus of malacostracan crustacean, which includes the species Aenigmacaris cornigerum and Aenigmacaris minima. Their closest extant relatives are the mantis shrimp.
Aratidecthes is an extinct genus of crustaceans.
Joanellia is an extinct genus of Carboniferous crustaceans. It contains the species Joanellia lundi from lagoons in what is now Montana, and Joanellia elegans from near-shore marine deposits in northern England and southern Scotland.
Palaeocuma hessi is an extinct species of cumacean, the only species in the genus Palaeocuma, and one of very few fossil cumaceans ever discovered. It lived in the Callovian age in France.
Crustaceans may pass through a number of larval and immature stages between hatching from their eggs and reaching their adult form. Each of the stages is separated by a moult, in which the hard exoskeleton is shed to allow the animal to grow. The larvae of crustaceans often bear little resemblance to the adult, and there are still cases where it is not known what larvae will grow into what adults. This is especially true of crustaceans which live as benthic adults, more-so than where the larvae are planktonic, and thereby easily caught.
Phylogeny of Malacostraca is the evolutionary relationships of the largest of the six classes of crustaceans, containing about 40,000 living species, divided among 16 orders. Its members display a great diversity of body forms. Although the class Malacostraca is united by a number of well-defined and documented features, which were recognised a century ago by William Thomas Calman in 1904, the phylogenetic relationship of the orders which compose this class is unclear due to the vast diversity present in their morphology. Molecular studies have attempted to infer the phylogeny of this clade, resulting in phylogenies which have a limited amount of morphological support. To resolve a well-supported eumalacostracan phylogeny and obtain a robust tree, it will be necessary to look beyond the most commonly utilized sources of data.
Crustaceans belong to the subphylum Crustacea,, and form a large, diverse group of arthropods including decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean group can be treated as a subphylum under the clade Mandibulata. It is now well accepted that the hexapods emerged deep in the Crustacean group, with the completed group referred to as Pancrustacea. Some crustaceans are more closely related to insects and the other hexapods than they are to certain other crustaceans.
Peachocaris is a genus of extinct crustaceans in the order Lophogastrida containing at least two species. Peachocaris were small shrimp-like crustacean that lived in the shallow seas of the late Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian). The species Peachocaris strongi is found in the Mazon Creek fossil beds, a carboniferous lagerstätte in Illinois.
The clade Multicrustacea constitutes the largest superclass of crustaceans, containing approximately four-fifths of all described crustacean species, including crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill, prawns, woodlice, barnacles, copepods, amphipods, mantis shrimp and others. The largest branch of multicrustacea is the class Malacostraca.
Acanthosquilla derijardi is a species of stomatopod crustacean. Its distribution is widespread throughout the Indo-West Pacific. The species was initially described by the American carcinologist Raymond B. Manning in 1970. Its junior synonym, A. sirindhorn, was named in 1995 in honor of Princess Sirindhorn of Thailand.
2023 in arthropod paleontology is a list of new arthropod fossil taxa, including arachnids, crustaceans, trilobites, and other arthropods that were announced or described, as well as other significant arthropod paleontological discoveries and events which occurred in 2023.
