Branchiopoda is a class of crustaceans. It comprises fairy shrimp, clam shrimp, Diplostraca, Notostraca, the Devonian Lepidocaris and possibly the Cambrian Rehbachiella. They are mostly small, freshwater animals that feed on plankton and detritus.
The Caridea, commonly known as caridean shrimp or true shrimp, from the Greek word καρίς, καρίδος, are an infraorder of shrimp within the order Decapoda. This infraorder contains all species of true shrimp. They are found widely around the world in both fresh and salt water. Many other animals with similar names – such as the mud shrimp of Axiidea and the boxer shrimp of Stenopodidea – are not true shrimp, but many have evolved features similar to true shrimp.
Lake Tanganyika is an African Great Lake. It is the second-oldest freshwater lake in the world, the second-largest by volume, and the second-deepest, in all cases after Lake Baikal in Siberia. It is the world's longest freshwater lake. The lake is shared among four countries—Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Burundi, and Zambia. With Tanzania (46%) and DRC (40%) possessing the majority of the lake. It drains into the Congo River system and ultimately into the Atlantic Ocean.
Malacostraca is the second largest of the six classes of pancrustaceans just behind hexapods, 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.
Clam shrimp are a group of bivalved branchiopod crustaceans that resemble the unrelated bivalved molluscs. They are extant and also known from the fossil record, from at least the Devonian period and perhaps before. They were originally classified in the former order Conchostraca, which later proved to be paraphyletic, due to the fact that water fleas are nested within clam shrimps. Clam shrimp are now divided into three orders, Cyclestherida, Laevicaudata, and Spinicaudata, in addition to the fossil family Leaiidae.
Caridina multidentata is a species of shrimp in the family Atyidae. It is native to Japan and Taiwan. Its common names include Yamato shrimp, Japanese shrimp, Amano shrimp, and algae shrimp.
Anostraca is one of the four orders of crustaceans in the class Branchiopoda; its members are referred to as fairy shrimp. They live in vernal pools and hypersaline lakes across the world, and they have even been found in deserts, ice-covered mountain lakes, and Antarctic ice. They are usually 6–25 mm (0.24–0.98 in) long. Most species have 20 body segments, bearing 11 pairs of leaf-like phyllopodia, and the body lacks a carapace. They swim "upside-down" and feed by filtering organic particles from the water or by scraping algae from surfaces, with the exception of Branchinecta gigas, or "giant fairy shrimp", which is itself a predator of other species of anostracans. They are an important food for many birds and fish, and some are cultured and harvested for use as fish food. There are 300 species spread across 8 families.
Caridina is a genus of freshwater atyid shrimp. They are widely found in tropical or subtropical water in Asia, Oceania and Africa. They are filter-feeders and omnivorous scavengers. They range from 0.9 to 9.8 mm to 1.2–7.4 mm in carapace length.
Atyidae is a family of shrimp, present in all tropical and most temperate waters of the world. Adults of this family are almost always confined to fresh water. This is the only family in the superfamily Atyoidea.
Syncaris pacifica is an endangered species of freshwater shrimp in the family Atyidae that occurs only in a limited range within the northern San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA. Specifically, this species occurs only in 17 stream segments within Sonoma, Napa and Marin Counties. This species is often translucent to transparent, with both sexes capable of considerable coloration altering, as a sophisticated form of camouflage. This decapod is commonly known as California freshwater shrimp, and is the only extant decapod shrimp in California that occurs in non-saline waters.
Syncaris is a genus of shrimp, containing only two species: the endangered California freshwater shrimp, Syncaris pacifica, and the extinct Pasadena freshwater shrimp, Syncaris pasadenae. This genus is one of only two genera of freshwater Atyid shrimp found in North America, with the other being the genus Palaemonias, which contains two endangered, cave-dwelling shrimp species. The genus Syncaris may have arisen during the Mesozoic, with the family Atyidae likely being of Jurassic origin.
Troglocaris is a genus of freshwater shrimp in the family Atyidae. These stygobitic, whitish and eyeless shrimp are found in Southern Europe. Although locally very common, the small ranges of the individual species make them highly vulnerable to habitat loss, for example by water extraction. Their underground habitat is often extremely stable; for example, the Vipavska jama cave in Slovenia is home to a population of T. anophthalmus, and its water only varies from 10 °C (50 °F) in the winter to 11 °C (52 °F) in the summer. In some Dinaric caves, notably Vjetrenica, as many as three species may occur together.
Neocaridina is a genus of atyid shrimp, containing 26 species as of March 2023. Members of the genus are distributed across East Asia including China, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Like many other Atyid shrimps, they live in freshwater habitats.
Branchinecta gaini is a species of fairy shrimp from Antarctica and Patagonia. It is the largest freshwater invertebrate in Antarctica, at 16 mm (0.63 in) long. It lives on bacteria and other organisms, surviving the winter as resting eggs.
Caridina dennerli is a small species of freshwater shrimp from Sulawesi (Indonesia) that grows up to 2.5 centimetres (1.0 in) in length. It takes its name from the German company Dennerle, which supported the expedition that led to the scientific description of the species. It is popularly known as the cardinal shrimp or Sulawesi shrimp in the aquarium trade.
The bee shrimp, is a species of small freshwater shrimp in the family Atyidae. It is native to Taiwan. These shrimp are scavengers, and eat small pieces of decayed vegetation and algae. Bee shrimp have a life span of about 18 months. They enjoy a temperature in the 70 to 78 °F range. Many modern versions of bee shrimp are selectively bred for their characteristics.
Caridina spongicola is a small species of freshwater shrimp from Sulawesi (Indonesia) that reaches 0.64 to 1.27 cm in length. In the wild it strictly lives on an undescribed species of freshwater sponge, making it one of only two known commensal species of freshwater shrimp. It is popularly known as the harlequin shrimp, and also sometimes Celebes beauty shrimp or sponge shrimp in the aquarium trade. It is often confused with Caridina woltereckae, a larger and more contrastingly colored species found in the same region as C. spongicola.
Caridina linduensis is a species of freshwater shrimp in the family Atyidae, endemic to Lake Lindu and its effluent stream in Sulawesi. It was known only from the type series, collected in 1904, and was recorded again in 2011 in a survey around Lake Lindu and is found in shallow littoral habitats of leaf litter, macrophytes, and dead wood. In the effluent stream it is found on soft substrates and slow flowing water, and is less common in the lake itself. The type locality of Lake Lindu was designated as a Recreation Park in 1978, and is part of the larger Lore Lindu National Park and UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. It is listed under IUCN criterion B1ab(iii,v) as Critically Endangered due to threats from introduced species of fish, land conversion to agriculture, logging, and shore disturbance caused by the grazing of water buffalo. Surveys are required to find the full distribution of C. linduensis, primarily its habitat in the effluent stream. C. linduensis is also sympatric with the recently described species Caridina dali and Caridina kaili.
Procaris noelensis is a species of shrimp, a single specimen having been described by Bruce & Davie from a freshwater/tidally influenced cave system on Christmas Island in 2006.
Caridina typus, also known as the Australian Amano Shrimp, is a species of amphidromous atyid shrimp. It was first described by H. Milne-Edwards in 1837. It has a broad distribution in tropical freshwater habitats in the Indo-West Pacific region, with its western range extending to eastern Africa and its eastern range extending to Polynesia. It is commonly found in rivers and streams in coastal areas or on islands. C. typus is known to play a role in sediment distribution and shredding leaf litter, manipulating the environment using their pereiopods and setaceous chelae. The species is also an important component of the food web, both as scavengers and as prey items, and is considered a keystone species for the stream ecosystems it inhabits. According to Choy and Marshall, the species can be characterized by a "short, dorsally unarmed rostrum, the presence of epipods on the first four pairs of pereiopods, and the presence of an appendix interna on the endopod of the first pleopod of both sexes." It can be kept in captivity by aquarists as pets.
