Branchiopoda is a class of crustaceans. It comprises fairy shrimp, clam shrimp, Diplostraca, Notostraca and the Devonian Lepidocaris. They are mostly small, freshwater animals that feed on plankton and detritus.
The Caridea, commonly known as caridean shrimp or true shrimp, 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.
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.
Remipedia is a class of blind crustaceans found in coastal aquifers which contain saline groundwater, with populations identified in almost every ocean basin so far explored, including in Australia, the Caribbean Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean. The first described remipede was the fossil Tesnusocaris goldichi. Since 1979, at least seventeen living species have been identified in subtropical regions around the world.
The Achelata is an infra-order of the decapod crustaceans, holding the spiny lobsters, slipper lobsters and their fossil relatives.
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.
Pancrustacea is the clade that comprises all crustaceans and hexapods. This grouping is contrary to the Atelocerata hypothesis, in which Myriapoda and Hexapoda are sister taxa, and Crustacea are only more distantly related. As of 2010, the Pancrustacea taxon is considered well accepted, with most studies recovering Hexapoda within Crustacea. The clade has also been called Tetraconata, referring to having four cone cells in the ommatidia. This name is preferred by some scientists as a means of avoiding confusion with the use of "pan-" to indicate a clade that includes a crown group and all of its stem group representatives.
Godzilliidae is a family of remipedes in the order Nectiopoda. There are at least two genera and four described species in Godzilliidae.
Faxonius limosus, synonym Orconectes limosus, is a species of crayfish in the family Cambaridae. It is native to the east coast of North America, from Quebec to the lower James River, Virginia, but has also been introduced to Europe. It is known commonly as the spinycheek crayfish.
Angolasaurus is an extinct genus of mosasaur. Definite remains from this genus have been recovered from the Turonian and Coniacian of Angola, and possibly the Coniacian of the United States, the Turonian of Brazil, and the Maastrichtian of Niger. While at one point considered a species of Platecarpus, recent phylogenetic analyses have placed it between the (then) plioplatecarpines Ectenosaurus and Selmasaurus, maintaining a basal position within the plioplatecarpinae.
Morlockia atlantida is a species of eyeless crustacean in the order Nectiopoda. It was discovered in August 2009 in the Tunnel de la Atlantida, the world's longest submarine lava tube on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands off the west coast of North Africa. Originally named Speleonectes atlantida, it was transferred to genus Morlockia in 2012. Like other remipedes, the species is equipped with venomous fangs.
Polychelida is an infraorder of decapod crustaceans. Fossil representatives are known dating from as far back as the Upper Triassic. A total of 38 extant species, all in the family Polychelidae, and 55 fossil species have been described.
Facetotecta is a poorly known subclass of thecostracan crustaceans. The adult forms have never been recognised, and the group is known only from its larvae, the "y-nauplius" and "y-cyprid" larvae. They are mostly found in the north Atlantic Ocean, neritic waters around Japan, and the Mediterranean Basin, where they also survive in brackish water.
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.
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.
Kallidecthes is an extinct genus of crustaceans.
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.
Crustaceans form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as 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.
Xibalbanus tulumensis is a venomous, hermaphroditic crustacean found in anchialine caves on the Yucatán Peninsula in the Caribbean Sea. This blind remipede liquefies the body contents of other crustaceans with a venom similar to that of rattlesnakes, and which includes digestive enzymes and a paralysing toxin.
This list of fossil arthropods described in 2018 is a list of new taxa of trilobites, fossil insects, crustaceans, arachnids, and other fossil arthropods of every kind that were described during the year 2018, as well as other significant discoveries, and events related to arthropod paleontology that are scheduled to occur in the year 2018.
