Natantia (Boas, 1880) is an
obsolete taxon
In biology, a taxon ( back-formation from '' taxonomy''; plural taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular n ...
of
decapod crustaceans, comprising those families that move predominantly by swimming – the
shrimp (comprising
Caridea
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 ...
and
Procarididea), prawns (
Dendrobranchiata) and
boxer shrimp
The Stenopodidea or boxer shrimps are a small group of decapod crustaceans. Often confused with Caridea shrimp or Dendrobranchiata prawns, they are neither, belonging to their own group.
Anatomy
They can be differentiated from the Dendrobranc ...
. The remaining Decapoda were placed in the
Reptantia
Reptantia is a clade of decapod crustaceans named in 1880 which includes lobsters, crabs and many other well-known crustaceans.
Classification
In older classifications, Reptantia was one of the two sub-orders of Decapoda alongside Natantia, w ...
, and consisted of
crabs,
lobsters and other large animals that move chiefly by walking along the bottom.
The division between Natantia and Reptantia was replaced in 1963, when
Martin Burkenroad
Martin David Burkenroad (March 20, 1910 – January 12, 1986) was an American marine biologist. He specialized in decapod crustaceans and fisheries science.
Biography
Burkenroad was born in New Orleans in 1910 as the only child of coffee import ...
erected the suborder
Pleocyemata
Pleocyemata is a suborder of decapod crustaceans, erected by Martin Burkenroad in 1963. Burkenroad's classification replaced the earlier sub-orders of Natantia and Reptantia with the monophyletic groups Dendrobranchiata (prawns) and Pleocyemata. ...
for those animals that brood their eggs on the
pleopods, leaving
Dendrobranchiata for the prawns.
Under this system, Natantia is a
paraphyletic group. Burkenroad's primary division of Decapoda into Dendrobranchiata and Pleocyemata has since been corroborated by
molecular analyses.
The name Natantia Owen, 1851 was utilized in a phylogenetic context by Madzia and Cau (2017) as the most exclusive mosasaurid clade including ''Mosasaurus'' and ''Tylosaurus'' but not ''Halisaurus''.
[Madzia and Cau (2017). Inferring ‘weakspots’ in phylogenetic trees: application to mosasauroid nomenclature. PeerJ5:e3782;DOI10.7717/peerj.3782]
Further reading
*
References
Decapods
Obsolete arthropod taxa
{{Decapoda-stub