Copepod

Copepod
Temporal range: Pennsylvanianrecent Likely early Paleozoic origin
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Superclass: Multicrustacea
Class: Copepoda
H. Milne-Edwards, 1840
Orders

Copepods (/ˈkpəpɒd/; meaning "oar-feet") are a group of small crustaceans found in nearly every freshwater and saltwater habitat. Some species are planktonic (living in the water column), some are benthic (living on the sediments), several species have parasitic phases, and some continental species may live in limnoterrestrial habitats and other wet terrestrial places, such as swamps, under leaf fall in wet forests, bogs, springs, ephemeral ponds, puddles, damp moss, or water-filled recesses of plants (phytotelmata) such as bromeliads and pitcher plants. Many live underground in marine and freshwater caves, sinkholes, or stream beds. Copepods are sometimes used as biodiversity indicators.

As with other crustaceans, copepods have a larval form. For copepods, the egg hatches into a nauplius form, with a head and a tail but no true thorax or abdomen. The larva molts several times until it resembles the adult and then, after more molts, achieves adult development. The nauplius form is so different from the adult form that it was once thought to be a separate species. The metamorphosis had, until 1832, led to copepods being misidentified as zoophytes or insects (albeit aquatic ones), or, for parasitic copepods, 'fish lice'.[1]

  1. ^ Damkaer, David (2002). The Copepod's Cabinet: A Biographical and Bibliographical History. American Philosophical Society. ISBN 9780871692405.