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Flatback Mud Crab
''Eurypanopeus depressus'', the flatback mud crab or depressed mud crab, is a true crab belonging to the infraorder Brachyura and the family Panopeidae. It is native to the western Atlantic Ocean and is often found in estuaries and lagoons, commonly living in close association with oysters. Description The flatback mud crab is a small species of crab up to long with a noticeably flattened, oval carapace, with four blunt teeth on either side. In colour, this crab is dark olive brown or olive grey, often somewhat mottled, with dark brown limbs. One chela (claw) is much bigger than the other and the underside of the body and the limbs are a pale colour. Distribution and habitat The flatback mud crab is found in the sub-tropical and temperate waters of the western Atlantic Ocean. Its range extends from Massachusetts to Florida and Texas, the Caribbean Sea, Bermuda, the Dutch West Indies and Uruguay. It occurs in the intertidal zone and the shallow sub-littoral zone, down to de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crab
Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the infraorder Brachyura, which typically have a very short projecting "tail" (abdomen) ( el, βραχύς , translit=brachys = short, / = tail), usually hidden entirely under the thorax. They live in all the world's oceans, in freshwater, and on land, are generally covered with a thick exoskeleton, and have a single pair of pincers. They first appeared during the Jurassic Period. Description Crabs are generally covered with a thick exoskeleton, composed primarily of highly mineralized chitin, and armed with a pair of chelae (claws). Crabs vary in size from the pea crab, a few millimeters wide, to the Japanese spider crab, with a leg span up to . Several other groups of crustaceans with similar appearances – such as king crabs and porcelain crabs – are not true crabs, but have evolved features similar to true crabs through a process known as carcinisation. Environment Crabs are found in all of the world's oceans, as well as in fresh w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sponge
Sponges, the members of the phylum Porifera (; meaning 'pore bearer'), are a basal animal clade as a sister of the diploblasts. They are multicellular organisms that have bodies full of pores and channels allowing water to circulate through them, consisting of jelly-like mesohyl sandwiched between two thin layers of cells. Sponges have unspecialized cells that can transform into other types and that often migrate between the main cell layers and the mesohyl in the process. Sponges do not have nervous, digestive or circulatory systems. Instead, most rely on maintaining a constant water flow through their bodies to obtain food and oxygen and to remove wastes. Sponges were first to branch off the evolutionary tree from the last common ancestor of all animals, making them the sister group of all other animals. Etymology The term ''sponge'' derives from the Ancient Greek word ( 'sponge'). Overview Sponges are similar to other animals in that they are multicellular, he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xanthoidea
Xanthoidea is a superfamily of crabs, comprising the three families Xanthidae, Panopeidae and Pseudorhombilidae. Formerly, a number of other families were included in Xanthoidea, but many of these have since been removed to other superfamilies. These include Carpilioidea, Eriphioidea, Hexapodoidea, Pilumnoidea and Trapezioidea. Even in this reduced state, Xanthoidea remains one of the most species-rich superfamilies of crabs. Families The World Register of Marine Species lists the following families: *Panopeidae Ortmann, 1893 * Pseudorhombilidae Alcock, 1900 *Xanthidae Xanthidae is a family of crabs known as gorilla crabs, mud crabs, pebble crabs or rubble crabs. Xanthid crabs are often brightly coloured and are highly poisonous, containing toxins which are not destroyed by cooking and for which no antidote is ... MacLeay, 1838 References External links * Crabs Arthropod superfamilies {{crab-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Host (biology)
In biology and medicine, a host is a larger organism that harbours a smaller organism; whether a parasite, parasitic, a mutualism (biology), mutualistic, or a commensalism, commensalist ''guest'' (symbiont). The guest is typically provided with nourishment and shelter. Examples include animals playing host to parasitic worms (e.g. nematodes), cell (biology), cells harbouring pathogenic (disease-causing) viruses, a Fabaceae, bean plant hosting mutualistic (helpful) Rhizobia, nitrogen-fixing bacteria. More specifically in botany, a host plant supplies nutrient, food resources to micropredators, which have an evolutionarily stable strategy, evolutionarily stable relationship with their hosts similar to ectoparasitism. The host range is the collection of hosts that an organism can use as a partner. Symbiosis Symbiosis spans a wide variety of possible relationships between organisms, differing in their permanence and their effects on the two parties. If one of the partners in an ass ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barnacle
A barnacle is a type of arthropod constituting the subclass Cirripedia in the subphylum Crustacea, and is hence related to crabs and lobsters. Barnacles are exclusively marine, and tend to live in shallow and tidal waters, typically in erosive settings. They are sessile (nonmobile) and most are suspension feeders, but those in infraclass Rhizocephala are highly specialized parasites on crustaceans. They have four nektonic (active swimming) larval stages. Around 1,000 barnacle species are currently known. The name is Latin, meaning "curl-footed". The study of barnacles is called cirripedology. Description Barnacles are encrusters, attaching themselves temporarily to a hard substrate or a symbiont such as a whale ( whale barnacles), a sea snake ('' Platylepas ophiophila''), or another crustacean, like a crab or a lobster (Rhizocephala). The most common among them, "acorn barnacles" ( Sessilia), are sessile where they grow their shells directly onto the substrate. Peduncul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Loxothylacus Panopaei
''Loxothylacus panopaei'' is a species of barnacle in the family Sacculinidae. It is native to the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. It is a parasitic castrator of small mud crabs in the family Panopeidae, mostly in the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Atlantic Ocean. Taxonomy ''L. panopaei'' was first described by the American zoologist Charles F. Gissler in 1884; it was parasitizing the mud crab '' Panopeus lacustris'' and was collected at Tampa, Florida. The barnacle infects a number of species of mud crab and it seems likely that it is a species complex. Further taxonomic studies should clarify the position. Description The parasitic adult ''L. panopaei'' consists of an externa, a yellowish-orange mass of soft tissue, attached by a stalk to a host crab's abdomen; the stalk branches internally into tubes which surround the crab's gut. Distribution ''L. panopaei'' is native to the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, the Atlantic coasts from Cape C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parasite
Parasitism is a close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. The entomologist E. O. Wilson has characterised parasites as "predators that eat prey in units of less than one". Parasites include single-celled protozoans such as the agents of malaria, sleeping sickness, and amoebic dysentery; animals such as hookworms, lice, mosquitoes, and vampire bats; fungi such as Armillaria mellea, honey fungus and the agents of ringworm; and plants such as mistletoe, dodder, and the Orobanchaceae, broomrapes. There are six major parasitic Behavioral ecology#Evolutionarily stable strategy, strategies of exploitation of animal hosts, namely parasitic castration, directly transmitted parasitism (by contact), wikt:trophic, trophicallytransmitted parasitism (by being eaten), Disease vector, vector-transmitted parasitism, parasitoidism, and micropreda ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Panopeus Herbstii
''Panopeus herbstii'' (the ''black-fingered mud crab'', ''black-clawed mud crab'', ''Atlantic mud crab'' or sometimes ''common mud crab'') is a true crab, belonging to the infraorder Brachyura, and is the largest of the mud crabs. ''Panopeus herbstii'' is small, growing to about 4 cm, with black-tipped claws of unequal size. ''P. herbstii'' has a strong exoskeleton, with very thick and strong claws. The shell is a dull gray and brown color. ''Panopeus herbstii'' is found along the Atlantic coast of North America, from Boston, Massachusetts to Santa Catarina, Brazil and on Bermuda. It is the most common xanthid crab on the east coast of the United States. It is found on muddy bottoms, where it takes refuge under stones and shells or among sponges and weeds, but it is rarely seen in the open. It feeds mainly on young clams, oysters, and periwinkles; it cracks open their shells with its strong claws. Mud crabs are especially fond of hermit crab Hermit crabs are anomura ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eastern Oyster
The eastern oyster (''Crassostrea virginica'')—also called the Atlantic oyster, American oyster, or East Coast oyster—is a species of true oyster native to eastern North and South America. Other names in local or culinary use include the Wellfleet oyster, Virginia oyster, Malpeque oyster, Blue Point oyster, Chesapeake Bay oyster, and Apalachicola oyster. ''C. virginica'' ranges from northern New Brunswick through parts of the West Indies and south to Brazil. It is farmed in all of the Maritime provinces of Canada and all Eastern Seaboard and Gulf states of the United States, as well as Puget Sound, Washington, where it is known as the Totten Inlet Virginica. It was introduced to the Hawaiian Islands in the nineteenth century and is common in Pearl Harbor. The eastern oyster is an important commercial species. Its distribution has been affected by habitat change; less than 1% of the population present when the first European colonists arrived is thought to remain in the Ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crustacean
Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) 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 (Remipedia, Cephalocarida, Branchiopoda) are more closely related to insects and the other hexapods than they are to certain other crustaceans. 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 th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amphipod
Amphipoda is an order of malacostracan crustaceans with no carapace and generally with laterally compressed bodies. Amphipods range in size from 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''. Etymology and names The name ''Amphipoda'' comes, via New Latin ', from the Greek roots 'on both/all sides' and 'foot'. This contrasts with the related Isopoda, which have a single kind of thoracic leg. Particularly among anglers, amphipods are known as ''freshwater shrimp'', ''scuds'', or ''sideswimmers''. Description Anatomy The body of an amphipod is divided into 13 segments, which can be grouped into a head, a thorax and an abdomen. The head is fused to the thorax, and bears two pairs of antennae and one pair of se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polychaete
Polychaeta () is a paraphyletic class (biology), class of generally marine invertebrate, marine annelid worms, common name, commonly called bristle worms or polychaetes (). Each body segment has a pair of fleshy protrusions called parapodia that bear many bristles, called chaetae, which are made of chitin. More than 10,000 species are described in this class. Common representatives include the lugworm (''Arenicola marina'') and the Alitta virens, sandworm or Alitta succinea, clam worm ''Alitta''. Polychaetes as a class are robust and widespread, with species that live in the coldest ocean temperatures of the abyssal plain, to forms which tolerate the extremely high temperatures near hydrothermal vents. Polychaetes occur throughout the Earth's oceans at all depths, from forms that live as plankton near the surface, to a 2- to 3-cm specimen (still unclassified) observed by the robot ocean probe Nereus (underwater vehicle), ''Nereus'' at the bottom of the Challenger Deep, the deepes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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