Bathynomus giganteus

Bathynomus giganteus
Temporal range: Holocene to recent[1]
Bathynomus giganteus at a depth of ca. 800 m
The underside of Bathynomus giganteus
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Malacostraca
Order: Isopoda
Family: Cirolanidae
Genus: Bathynomus
Species:
B. giganteus
Binomial name
Bathynomus giganteus

Bathynomus giganteus is a species of aquatic crustacean, of the order Isopoda. It is a member of the giant isopods (Bathynomus), and as such it is related—albeit distantly—to shrimps and crabs.[2] It was the first Bathynomus species ever documented and was described in 1879 by French zoologist Alphonse Milne Edwards after the isopod was found in fishermen's nets off the coast of the Dry Tortugas in the Gulf of Mexico.[3]

The Bathynomus genus is benthic and abundant in cold waters with a depth of 310–2140 m in the West-Atlantic, including the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. It was the first species of Bathynomus to be described and historically it was reported from other oceans, but these are now recognized as other closely related species.[4][5] The unusually large size of Bathynomus has been attributed to an effect called deep-sea gigantism, where invertebrates living in cold deep waters tend to grow larger and have longer lifespans.[6][7]

  1. ^ "WoRMS - World Register of Marine Species - Bathynomus giganteus A. Milne-Edwards, 1879".
  2. ^ "Giant Isopod | Bathynomus giganteus | SeaPics.com". seapics.com. Retrieved 17 January 2019.
  3. ^ Briones-Fourzán, Patricia; Lozano-Alvarez, Enrique (1 July 1991). "Aspects of the biology of the giant isopod Bathynomus giganteus A. Milne Edwards, 1879 (Flabellifera: Cirolanidae), off the Yucatan Peninsula". Journal of Crustacean Biology. 11 (3): 375–385. doi:10.2307/1548464. JSTOR 1548464.
  4. ^ Lowry, J. K.; Dempsey, K. (2006). "The giant deep-sea scavenger genus Bathynomus (Crustacea, Isopoda, Cirolanidae) in the Indo-West Pacific". In Richer de Forges, B.; Justone, J.-L. (eds.). Tropical Deep-Sea Benthos. Vol. 24. Mémoires du Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. pp. 163–193.
  5. ^ Shipley, O.; Bruce, N. L.; Violich, M.; Baco, A.; Rawlins, S.; Brooks, E. J. (2016). "A new species of Bathynomus Milne Edwards, 1879 (Isopoda: Cirolanidae) from The Bahamas, Western Atlantic". Zootaxa. 4147 (1): 82–88. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.4147.1.6. PMID 27515606.
  6. ^ McClain, C. R. (4 April 2007). "Why is The Giant Isopod Giant? | ScienceBlogs". scienceblogs.com. Retrieved 17 January 2019.
  7. ^ Timofeev, S. F. (November 2001). "Bergmann's Principle and Deep-Water Gigantism in Marine Crustaceans". Izvestiia Akademii Nauk. Seriia Biologicheskaia. 28 (6): 764–768.