''Paramysis baeri'' is a species of

mysid Mysida is an order of small, shrimp-like crustaceans in the malacostracan superorder Peracarida. Their common name opossum shrimps stems from the presence of a brood pouch or "marsupium" in females. The fact that the larvae are reared in thi ...

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 ...

from the genus ''

Paramysis ''Paramysis'' (from the Greek affix ', "near", "beside", and the genus name ''Mysis'') is a genus of mysid crustaceans (Mysidacea) in family Mysidae, distributed in coastal zone of low boreal East Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea and the basins ...

'', named in honour of the prominent biologist

Karl Ernst von Baer Karl Ernst Ritter von Baer Edler von Huthorn ( – ) was a Baltic German scientist and explorer. Baer was a naturalist, biologist, geologist, meteorologist, geographer, and is considered a, or the, founding father of embryology. He was ...

. Its body is long, and it is only found in the coastal waters of the

Caspian Sea The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, often described as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia; east of the Caucasus, west of the broad steppe of Central Asia ...

, on sandy and muddy bottoms, at depths of less than . For over a century, it was thought to be distributed throughout the whole Ponto-Caspian basin, but recently the range was reconsidered after the rediscovery and re-establishment of the closely related species ''

Paramysis bakuensis ''Paramysis bakuensis'' is a species of mysid crustacean from the family Mysidae, named by the locality from where it was originally described, the town of Baku in Azerbaijan by the Caspian Sea. Taxonomic history After the description by Norwegi ...

''. Since the taxonomical status of ''P. baeri'' has been reconsidered, the distribution and ecology of the species remains poorly known. ''Paramysis baeri'' can be distinguished from ''P. bakuensis'' and other species of the subgenus ''Paramysis'' s. str. by the rather broad, almost quadrangular exopod of

maxilla The maxilla (plural: ''maxillae'' ) in vertebrates is the upper fixed (not fixed in Neopterygii) bone of the jaw formed from the fusion of two maxillary bones. In humans, the upper jaw includes the hard palate in the front of the mouth. The t ...

2, the strongly serrated paradactylar claw-setae of

pereiopod The decapod (crustaceans such as a crab, lobster, shrimp or prawn) is made up of 20 body segments grouped into two main body parts: the cephalothorax and the pleon (abdomen). Each segment may possess one pair of appendages, although in various g ...

6, and other features.

References

Mysida Crustaceans described in 1882 Freshwater crustaceans of Asia Fauna of the Caspian Sea {{Malacostraca-stub