Copepods are a group of small crustaceans found in the sea and nearly every freshwater habitat. Many species are planktonic, but more are benthic, and some continental species may live in limno-terrestrial habitats and other wet terrestrial places, such as swamps, under leaf fall in wet forests, bogs, springs, ephemeral ponds and puddles, damp moss, or water-filled recesses (phytothelmata) of plants such as bromeliads and pitcher plants. Many live underground in marine and freshwater caves, sinkholes, or stream beds. Some copepods are parasitic and attach themselves to fish, sharks, marine mammals, and many kinds of invertebrates such as molluscs, tunicates, or corals.

Copepods form a subclass belonging to the subphylum Crustacea (crustaceans). Some authors consider the copepods to be a full class. The group contains ten orders with some 14,000 described species. A scientist that studies copepods is a copepodologist.

Planktonic copepods are hugely important food organisms for small fish, whales, seabirds and other crustaceans such as krill in the ocean and in fresh water. They are typically 1-2 mm long, with a teardrop shaped body and large antennae. Although like other crustaceans they have an armoured exoskeleton, they are so small that in most species this armour, and the entire body, is almost totally transparent. Copepods have a single eye, usually bright red and in the centre of the transparent head. Some polar copepods reach 1 cm. Most of the smaller copepods feed directly on phytoplankton, catching cells singly, but a few of the larger species are predators of their smaller relatives. Herbivorous copepods, particularly those in rich cold seas, store up energy from their food as oil droplets in the while they feed in the spring and summer plankton blooms. These droplets may take up half of the volume of the body. Some scientists say they form the largest animal biomass on earth. They compete for this title with Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba). Because of their smaller size and relatively faster growth rates, however, and because they are more evenly distributed throughout more of the world's oceans, copepods almost certainly contribute far more to the secondary productivity of the world's oceans than krill do.

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Estimated Molecular Phylogenetic Relationships of Six Siphonostomatoid Families (Copepoda) Symbiotic on Elasmobranchs http://ff.im/-bIfgB
kzelnio (Kevin Zelnio) Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:22:05 -0000
Estimated Molecular Phylogenetic Relationships of Six Siphonostomatoid Families (Copepoda) Symbiotic on Elasmobranchs http://ff.im/-bIfgB
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wondrousstrange (Dorcas Midkiff) Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:13:17 -0000
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