Crustacea
Sign in to saveCrustaceans (from Latin word "crustacea" meaning: "those with shells" or "crusted ones") are mandibulate arthropods that are traditionally a part of the paraphyletic subphylum Crustacea (). Crustaceans are mainly aquatic, including decapods (shrimps, prawns, crabs, lobsters, and crayfish), seed shrimps, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, opossum shrimps, amphipods and mantis shrimp. It is now well accepted that hexapods (insects and entognathans) are cladistically crustaceans, with the two groups now combined in the monophyletic clade Pancrustacea. The thr
AI overview
Crustaceans are a diverse group of armored arthropods that live mainly in water, including familiar animals like crabs, lobsters, shrimp, and krill, as well as many less well-known species. They matter because they are enormously abundant in aquatic ecosystems and serve as crucial food sources for countless other organisms, while also playing important roles in marine and freshwater food webs.
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Taxonomy · GBIF
GENUS
- KingdomAnimalia
- PhylumArthropoda
- ClassInsecta
- OrderHymenoptera
- FamilyApidae
via GBIF · CC0
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- taxon
- Parent taxon
- Pancrustacea
- Image
- Crustacea diversity.jpg
Show 6 more facts
- P910
- Q8922920
Article
14 sectionsContents
- Anatomy
- Ecology
- Life cycle
- Mating system
- Eggs
- Larvae
- DNA repair
- Classification and phylogeny
- Fossil record
- Consumption by humans
- See also
- References
- Sources
- External links
Crustaceans (from Latin word "crustacea" meaning: "those with shells" or "crusted ones") are mandibulate arthropods that are traditionally a part of the paraphyletic subphylum Crustacea (). Crustaceans are mainly aquatic, including decapods (shrimps, prawns, crabs, lobsters, and crayfish), seed shrimps, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, opossum shrimps, amphipods and mantis shrimp. It is now well accepted that hexapods (insects and entognathans) are cladistically crustaceans, with the two groups now combined in the monophyletic clade Pancrustacea. The three classes Cephalocarida, Branchiopoda, and Remipedia are more closely related to the hexapods than they are to any other crustaceans (oligostracans and multicrustaceans).
The 67,000 described species range in size from Stygotantulus stocki at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span of up to and a mass of . Like other arthropods, crustaceans have an exoskeleton, which they moult to grow. They are distinguished from other groups of arthropods, such as insects, myriapods and chelicerates, by the possession of biramous (two-parted) limbs, and by their larval forms, such as the nauplius stage of branchiopods and copepods.