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Uropods are posterior
appendage An appendage (or outgrowth) is an external body part, or natural prolongation, that protrudes from an organism's body. In arthropods, an appendage refers to any of the homologous body parts that may extend from a body segment, including anten ...
s found on a wide variety of
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 ...
s. They typically have functions in locomotion.


Definition

Uropods are often defined as the appendages of the last body segment of a crustacean. An alternative definition suggested by Frederick R. Schram restricts the term to those structures arising from the segment before the anal segment (the segment which carries the
anus The anus (Latin, 'ring' or 'circle') is an opening at the opposite end of an animal's digestive tract from the mouth. Its function is to control the expulsion of feces, the residual semi-solid waste that remains after food digestion, which, d ...
). Under this latter definition, the appendages of the anal segment are caudal rami, which are
analogous Analogy (from Greek ''analogia'', "proportion", from ''ana-'' "upon, according to" lso "against", "anew"+ ''logos'' "ratio" lso "word, speech, reckoning" is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject ( ...
to uropods.


Form

Uropods are typically
biramous The arthropod leg is a form of jointed appendage of arthropods, usually used for walking. Many of the terms used for arthropod leg segments (called podomeres) are of Latin origin, and may be confused with terms for bones: ''coxa'' (meaning hip, plur ...
– comprising an endopod and an exopod. The exopod is typically the larger, and may be divided in two by a transverse suture known as the diaeresis. The uropods may work in concert with the
telson The telson () is the posterior-most division of the body of an arthropod. Depending on the definition, the telson is either considered to be the final segment of the arthropod body, or an additional division that is not a true segment on accou ...
to form a "tail fan".


References

{{Reflist, 32em Crustacean anatomy