A diversity of sensilla has been described in crustaceans, both across species and within a given species. However, few homologous setal types have been identified in crustaceans. In this study we examined setae with features of the hooded sensillum, which is a class of bimodal chemomechanosensilla first identified on antennules of the Caribbean spiny lobster Panulirus argus. We examined the an...

BACKGROUND This article records the traditional knowledge of crab gatherers in the city of Conde, in the North Coast Region of Bahia State, Northeastern Brazil. METHODS Data on biological and ecological aspects of economically important brachyuran crustaceans have been obtained from semi-structured interviews and in loco observations conducted from September 2007 to December 2009. A total of ...

Bursicon is the ultimate hormone in insect ecdysis, which is involved in cuticle hardening. Here we show that mRNAs encoding the heterodimeric cystine knot protein bursicon (Burs alpha, beta), are present in crustaceans, suggesting ubiquity of this hormone in arthropods. We firstly report the cloning, sequencing of mRNAs encoding subunits from the water flea, Daphnia arenata and the CNS of the ...

Hematodinium is a parasitic dinoflagellate and emerging pathogen of crustaceans. It preferably manifests in haemolymph of marine decapod crustaceans, killing a large variety of genera with significant impacts on fisheries worldwide. There is, however, evidence that some crustacean stocks harbor high prevalence, low intensity infections that may not result in widespread host mortality and are th...

> Abstract 150 years after Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ and 100 years after W.T. Calman’s infl uential treatment on crustacean morphology and classifi cation, crustacean phylogenetics remains an active, exciting and controversial fi eld of research. An international symposium held from 7th–11th October 2008 at the University of Rostock attempted to summarize the latest developments. Molecular e...

Polarisation sensitivity (PS) - the ability to detect the orientation of polarised light - occurs in a wide variety of invertebrates [1] [2] and vertebrates [3] [4] [5], many of which are marine species [1]. Of these, the crustacea are particularly well documented in terms of their structural [6] and neural [7] [8] adaptations for PS. The few behavioural studies conducted on crustaceans demonst...

Adaptation to diverse habitats has prompted the development of distinct organs in different animals to better exploit their living conditions. This is the case for the respiratory organs of arthropods, ranging from tracheae in terrestrial insects to gills in aquatic crustaceans. Although Drosophila tracheal development has been studied extensively, the origin of the tracheal system has been a l...

It has been previously suggested that there is a conservative program for neural development amongst the arthropods, on the basis that a stereotyped set of cells involved in establishing the axon tracts in the CNS of insect embryos is also present in crayfish embryos. We have examined the spatiotemporal pattern of axon growth from a set of early differentiating central neurons in the embryo of ...

Cuticular structures of arthropods undergo dramatic molt-related changes from being soft to becoming hard. The shell-hardening process of decapod crustaceans includes sclerotization and mineralization. Hemocyte PPO plays a central role in melanization and sclerotization particularly in wound healing in crustaceans. However, little is known about its role in the crustacean initial shell-hardenin...

Our analyses of early neurogenesis in several representatives of chelicerates (e.g. spiders) and myriapods (e.g. millipedes) have revealed that the genetic network involved in recruitment and specification of neural precursors is conserved in all euarthropod groups. However, the expression pattern and function of these genes is adapted to the distinct morphology of neural precursor formation in...