Related Research Articles
A hydrothermal vent is a fissure on the seafloor from which geothermally heated water discharges. Hydrothermal vents are commonly found near volcanically active places, areas where tectonic plates are moving apart at spreading centers, ocean basins, and hotspots. Hydrothermal deposits are rocks and mineral ore deposits formed by the action of hydrothermal vents.
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, woodlice, amphipods, mantis shrimp 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.
Amphipoda is an order of malacostracan crustaceans with no carapace and generally with laterally compressed bodies. Amphipods range in size from 1 to 340 millimetres and are mostly detritivores or scavengers. There are more than 9,900 amphipod species so far described. They are mostly marine animals, but are found in almost all aquatic environments. Some 1,900 species live in fresh water, and the order also includes terrestrial animals and sandhoppers such as Talitrus saltator.
Ocypode is a genus of ghost crabs found in the sandy shores of tropical and subtropical regions throughout the world. They have a box-like body, thick and elongated eyestalks, and one claw is larger than the other in both males and females. They inhabit deep burrows in the intertidal zone. They are primarily nocturnal, and are generalist scavengers and predators of small animals. The genus contains 21 species.
Leptostraca is an order of small, marine crustaceans. Its members, including the well-studied Nebalia, occur throughout the world's oceans and are usually considered to be filter-feeders. It is the only extant order in the subclass Phyllocarida. They are believed to represent the most primitive members of their class, the Malacostraca, and first appear in the fossil record during the Cambrian period.
Alvinocarididae is a family of shrimp, originally described by M. L. Christoffersen in 1986 from samples collected by DSV Alvin, from which they derive their name. Shrimp of the family Alvinocarididae generally inhabit deep sea hydrothermal vent regions, and hydrocarbon cold seep environments. Carotenoid pigment has been found in their bodies. The family Alvinocarididae comprises 7 extant genera.
The superorder Peracarida is a large group of malacostracan crustaceans, having members in marine, freshwater, and terrestrial habitats. They are chiefly defined by the presence of a brood pouch, or marsupium, formed from thin flattened plates (oostegites) borne on the basalmost segments of the legs. Peracarida is one of the largest crustacean taxa and includes about 12,000 species. Most members are less than 2 cm (0.8 in) in length, but the largest is probably the giant isopod which can reach 76 cm (30 in).
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.
Kiwa is a genus of marine decapods living at deep-sea hydrothermal vents and cold seeps. The animals are commonly referred to as "yeti lobsters" or "yeti crabs", after the legendary yeti, because of their "hairy" or bristly appearance. The genus is placed in its own family, Kiwaidae, in the superfamily Chirostyloidea.
Nebalia is a large genus of small crustaceans containing more than half of the species in the order Leptostraca, with over thirty species:
The Bythograeidae are a small family of blind crabs which live around hydrothermal vents. The family contains 16 species in six genera. Their relationships to other crabs are unclear. They are believed to eat bacteria and other vent organisms.
Mictacea is an monotypical order of crustaceans, originally erected for four species of small shrimp-like animals of the deep sea and anchialine caves.
In zoology, deep-sea gigantism is the tendency for species of invertebrates and other deep-sea dwelling animals to be larger than their shallower-water relatives across a large taxonomic range. Proposed explanations for this type of gigantism include colder temperature, food scarcity, reduced predation pressure and increased dissolved oxygen concentrations in the deep sea. The inaccessibility of abyssal habitats has hindered the study of this topic.
Nebaliopsis typica is a species of leptostracan crustacean, the only species in the genus Nebaliopsis. It is exceptionally large for a leptostracan, at up to 40 millimetres (1.6 in) in length, compared to 5–15 mm (0.2–0.6 in) for the other species. It is also the only species not to brood its eggs, but instead lays them directly into the water; correspondingly, there is no sexual dimorphism in Nebaliopsis.
Nebaliopsididae is a family of leptostracan crustaceans. It contains only two species, Nebaliopsis typica and Pseudonebaliopsis atlantica.
Joel W. Martin is an American marine biologist and invertebrate zoologist who is currently Chief of the Division of Invertebrate Studies and Curator of Crustacea at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHMLAC). His main area of research is the morphology and systematics of marine decapod crustaceans.
Cyanagraea praedator is a species of crab that lives on hydrothermal vents, and the only species in the genus Cyanagraea.
The "Hoff crab" is a species of deep-sea squat lobster in the family Kiwaidae, which lives on hydrothermal vents near Antarctica. The crustacean was given its English nickname in 2010 by UK deep-sea scientists aboard the RRS James Cook, owing to resemblance between its dense covering of setae on the ventral surface of the exoskeleton and the hairy chest of the actor David Hasselhoff. The 2010 expedition to explore hydrothermal vents on the East Scotia Ridge was the second of three expeditions to the Southern Ocean by the UK led research consortium, ChEsSo.
Crustaceans form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimps, prawns, krill, woodlice, and barnacles. The crustacean group can be treated as a subphylum under the clade Mandibulata; because of recent molecular studies it is now well accepted that the crustacean group is paraphyletic, and comprises all animals in the clade Pancrustacea other than hexapods. Some crustaceans are more closely related to insects and the other hexapods than they are to certain other crustaceans.
References
- 1 2 R. R. Hessler (1984). "Dahlella caldariensis new genus new species - a leptostracan (Crustacea, Malacostraca) from deep-sea hydrothermal vents". Journal of Crustacean Biology . 4 (4): 655–664. doi:10.2307/1548079. JSTOR 1548079.
- ↑ "Dahlella caldariensis". Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia . 2003.
- 1 2 Genefor K. Walker-Smith & Gary C. B. Poore (2001). "A phylogeny of the Leptostraca (Crustacea) with keys to families and genera" (PDF). Memoirs of Museum Victoria . 58 (2): 383–410.
- ↑ Todd Haney. "Leptostraca Specimen Database Search". Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Archived from the original on 2008-10-10.
- ↑ Todd A. Haney, Robert R. Hessler & Joel W. Martin (2001). "Nebalia schizophthalma, a new species of leptostracan (Malacostraca) from deep waters off the east coast of the United States" (PDF). Journal of Crustacean Biology . 21 (1): 192–201. doi:10.1651/0278-0372(2001)021[0192:NSANSO]2.0.CO;2. JSTOR 1549768.
- ↑ Todd Haney. "Synonymy". Los Angeles PEET project on Leptostraca. Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Archived from the original on 2008-09-06.