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 the terrestrial sandhoppers such as Talitrus saltator and Arcitalitrus sylvaticus.
Gammaridea is one of the suborders of the order Amphipoda, comprising small, shrimp-like crustaceans. Until recently, in a traditional classification, it encompassed about 7,275 (92%) of the 7,900 species of amphipods described by then, in approximately 1,000 genera, divided among around 125 families. That concept of Gammaridea included almost all freshwater amphipods, while most of the members still were marine.
Hadziidae is a family of amphipods, which is difficult to distinguish from the related family Melitidae. It contains the following genera:
Melphidippidae is a family of amphipods which rest upside-down and feed on particles of food suspended in the water. Three genera are recognised:
Phliantidae is a family of isopod-like amphipod crustaceans chiefly from the southern hemisphere.
Oedicerotidae is a family of amphipods. It comprises the following genera:
Lysianassidae is a family of marine amphipods, containing the following genera:
Ceinidae is a family of amphipods. Until 1972, they were considered part of the family Phliantidae. Some genera previously included in this family have been transferred to the family Hyalidae.
Melitidae is a family of amphipods. It contains around 45 genera, and formerly included a further 40 genera that are now placed in the family Maeridae.
Leucothoidae is a family of amphipods. It contains 138 species in 5 genera:
Cyproideidae is a family of amphipod crustaceans. Eighteen genera and 43 species have been described as of 2009. They mostly occur mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, where they form associations with corals, sponges, crinoids and hydroids.
Photis is a genus of amphipod crustaceans, containing the following species:
Africorchestia is a genus of sand-hoppers in the family Talitridae.
Yhi yindi is a species of amphipod crustacean, known only from Orpheus Island, Queensland, Australia. It was described in 1991 by J. Laurens Barnard and J. D. Thomas, and remains the only species in the genus Yhi.
Alicellidae is a family of amphipod crustaceans, which live as scavengers in the deep sea, often in association with hydrothermal vents. The family includes the following genera:
Phoxocephalidae is a family of small, shrimp-like crustaceans in the suborder Gammaridea described by Georg Ossian Sars in 1891. It contains Cocoharpinia iliffei, a critically endangered species on the IUCN Red List.
Cochinorchestia is a genus of amphipod belonging to the family Talitridae.
Maeridae is a family of marine amphipods, which was first described by Taudl Krapp-Schickel in 2008.
Lauren Elizabeth Hughes is an Australian carcinologist and curator. She specialises in the study of amphipods.
Aborolobatea insidiosa is a species of marine crustacean in the Oedicerotidae family, and was first described in 2009 by Lauren E. Hughes and James K. Lowry.
