Lmst

Marine copepod are small aquatic crustaceans.

Photograph: Zachary Sanchez/Nikon Small World

#photomicrography
#copepods
#crustaceans

Spiky creatures with purple spots on dark blue bodies.

#NewSpecies!
New copepod from #southchinasea just surfaced:

Monstrilla pseudograndis

Treatment: https://treatment.plazi.org/id/9851EEA4-949C-5DAF-9365-08704BAE1098
Publication: https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1232.144830
#ZooKeys #MonstrillaPseudograndis

#FAIRdata
#science #OA #openaccess #biology #taxonomy #ecology #biodiversity #nature #wildlife #conservation #animals #invertebrates #arthropods #crustacea #copepods #zooplankton

@RichardAshwell 👀 quite the creature #copepods

BBC article screenshot showing a long armed fuzzy ocean critter
Prof Daniel J Mayor @oceanplankton
This copepod has hair-like arms for feeding If anyone has heard of them, it's probably as a type of fish food available to buy online. But their life cycle is odd and fascinating. Take the copepod, a type of zooplankton that is a distant relative of crabs and lobsters. Just 1-10mm in size, they spend most of their lives asleep between 500m to 2km deep in the ocean.

27-Jun-2025
Tiny ocean migrants play a massive role in #SouthernOcean #carbonStorage

A groundbreaking study has revealed that small but mighty #zooplankton—including #copepods, #krill, and #salps—are key players in the Southern #Ocean’s ability to absorb and store #carbon.

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1089054 #science #ecology #climateCatastrophe

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
Did you know some #copepods can "porpoise" out of the water, even though they are only mm sized? The forces required for them to break the significant surface tension of the water is enormous, 10x larger than other animals scaled to size. This requires swimming escape velocities > 1 m/s!
Surface dwelling copepods (neustonic) doing this is one thing, but so can pelagic ones. Full paper in link 📕.
#science #oceans #MarineBiology
https://www.oceanlifecentre.dk/news/nyhed?id=b2d38ca9-df5f-4c7d-b4c2-320cd3c16890

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
Mating by copepods is a complicated process since they are always at risk of predation by other plankton or fishes. Male #copepods carefully mechanically and chemically track a receptive female, capture them, and deposit an adhesive spermatophore near the genital opening, all assisted with their specially modified antennae. The "bent" geniculate antenna in Calanoids are usually characteristic for identification.
#science #zooplankton

image/jpeg a microscope photograph of a shrimp-like male calanoid copepod with very long antennae with one having a distinct kink in it marked with a "ga" as a geniculate antenna. Source: An Image-Based Key To The Zooplankton Of North America
Version 5.0.

image/jpeg two shrimp-like copepods are shown side by side, one female carrying paired egg sacs off the abdomen, and a slightly smaller male with distinctively hooked antennae. A scale bar indicates they are approximately 1 mm long. Cyclops bicuspidus, NOAA GLERL.

Weekend #Plankton #Factoid 🦠🦐
I've always been impressed by this video from New Scientist about #copepods, the planet's most abundant multicellular organism, with interviews from several UK universities, including Exeter and Southampton. Prof Daniel Mayer & others give a lovely explaination on why these #zooplankton, and their poo, are so important to the #ocean ecosystem and #carbon cycling, and why #ClimateChange size shrinkage could have such an impact. #Science 🎥
https://youtu.be/60DRMH9QdV4

Weekend #Plankton #Factoid 🦠🦐
Some #copepods have resin and silica lined "opal" teeth called gnathobases - which is a great word! These hardened mandibles are used to crunch open the silica frustules of #diatom algae (viewed as co-evolutionary pressure). They are replaced at molt, but adults only get the one set, and they wear down. Eventually, they must settle for #feeding on less crunchy diatoms, smaller cells, or the softer cellulose covered dinoflagellates.
#Science
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2407876121

image/jpeg microscope image of the worn mandibles of a copepod fed on hard shelled distoms. The spines on top of the structure are significantly worn down.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2407876121

image/jpeg an electon microscope image of a disc-shapped glass diatom shell pierced by evenly spaced pores.
CSIRO CC 3.0
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Detail,_CSIRO_ScienceImage_7632_SEM_diatom_(cropped).jpg

Weekend #Plankton #Factoid🦠🦐
#Neuston refers to organisms that live at the interface between water and air. They can float on the surface like by-the-wind sailors, use #water tension like water striders, or live near the surface like Pontellid #copepods. Many of these organisms use bright blue astaxanthin pigment for protection from #UV radiation. They are patchily distributed and are an oasis of biomass in low productivity #oceans, yet are still poorly studied. #science
https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/30/neuston-sea-creatures-ocean-surface-science-study

image/png an image diagram of a neuston food web showing many organisms from plankton to birds and fish. Floating species are enclosed in a grey box (Glaucus spp., Janthina spp., Dosima fascicularis, Porpita sp., Physalia sp.), which may be preyed upon by exampled large predators. Images of Mola mola, Laysan albatross, hawksbill sea turtle, and sooty shearwater from Wikimedia Commons. Images of Glaucus marginatus, Janthina umbilicata, Dosima fascicularis, Physalia sp., Velella sp., and Porpita sp. by Denis Riek. Image of copepod, image of fish eggs, image of young sailfish by Linda Ianniello.
CCA 4.0 international
Helm RR (2021)
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001046

Whale sharks given a health check with #ultrasound imaging technique https://phys.org/news/2024-07-whale-sharks-health-ultrasound-imaging.html

Internal organs and body tissues of free-swimming whale sharks imaged using underwater ultrasound https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2024.1285429/full

"when they started to scrape the parasitic #copepods off their lips, the whale #sharks slowed down, hung vertically in the water and treated them like giant cleaner #fish... While the #WhaleSharks were in this position, the researchers were able to use underwater ultrasound"

underwater photo of 2 divers touching a large whale shark

Weekend #Plankton #Factoid 🦐🦠
There is a well-known ecological relationship called Bergmann's Rule which states that populations & species of larger size tend to be found in colder environments at higher latitudes. This pattern also holds true for #phytoplankton and #zooplankton. Polar #copepods like Calanus hyperboreus (~5 mm) are relative giants compared to tiny tropical Parvocalanus crassirostris or Oithona spp. (300-400 µm). These tiny copepods were regularly missed by coarse mesh nets.

image/jpeg a large, transparent, segmented, cylindrical crustacean with very long dark antennae is shown in a microscope image. A scale bar of 2000 microns suggests it is 6-8 mm long. Calanus hyperboreus.
Photo from Russ Hopcroft. Public Domain. NOAA.

image/png a darkly pigmented cylindrical crustacean with long outward facing antenna is shown in a microscope image. The scale bar of 100 microns suggest it is 0.5 mm long. Parvocalanus crassirostris.

Weekend #Plankton #Factoid 🦐🦠
Microplastics are in the news a lot as a pollutant, but what exactly is the impact on #zooplankton? #Microplastics are a similar size to the #algae they graze on, so either they have to expend energy sorting through plastics to find a food item, or plastics are consumed and can block guts or limit absorbtion of actual food. This study looks at #amphipod predation on #copepods with microplastics.

https://vancouversun.com/news/microplastics-from-laundry-harm-zooplankton-reducing-food-source-for-fish-study

Full paper in STE https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.167301

image/jpeg a translucent white elongated torpedo shaped zooplankton with numerous swimming legs below. A bright orange gut band is visible, and the head has a highly pigmented red eye. A red size bar indicates the organism is about 10000 microns in length.
Cyphocaris challengeri
Photo from Russ Hopcroft UAF

Weekend #Plankton #Factoid 🦐🦠
While #copepods are familiar as a common #zooplankton, it isn't widely known that Copepoda orders can be #parasites (Siphonostomatoida). Some are absolutely wild looking, but the 600 species of "sea lice" definitely look like copepods. Naturally ectoparasitic on wild fishes, eating skin and blood, their numbers skyrocket in farmed #salmon pens. Controls aren't simple, and as this @thetyee article points out, national regulations vary widely.
https://www.thetyee.ca/News/2023/12/26/Canada-Sea-Lice-Limits/

image/jpeg a small silver fish with at least 5 large parasitic copepod sea lice attached to it.

Weekend #Plankton #Factoid 🦐🦠

#Copepods are one of the most numerous metazoans on the planet. They are also capable of insanely fast #swimming escape speeds (20 cm/s) and super sensitive to their environment through mechano- and chemosensors on their antennae. Something not as well known is that their nerves are coated in myelin (often thought found only in vertebrates). This gives them 3x faster reponses to predators. Very sophisticated for a 1-2 mm long #zooplankton.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12518174_The_need_for_speed_II_Myelin_in_calanoid_copepods

#Parasite of the Day: Diexanthema hakuhomaruae http://dailyparasite.blogspot.com/2023/07/diexanthema-hakuhomaruae.html

D. hakuhomaruae sp. nov. (#Copepoda) from the #HadalZone in the Northwestern #Pacific https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11686-023-00676-z

"Parasitic #copepods come in all kinds of shapes that would defy most people's idea of what a #crustacean is 'supposed' to look like. And D. hakuhomaruae is no different - its tiny body is ROUND and if anything, it looks like a legless tick. And much like a tick, it attaches itself stubbornly to the leg of its host"

Diexanthema hakuhomaruae attached to the leg of its isopod host.

Sunday #Plankton #Factoid 🦐🦠

While most are familiar with green and productive tropical land, many don't know it can be opposite in the #ocean, with fertile polar regions. When sunlight returns to the poles, oceans bloom with #phytoplankton, which many large (almost a cm long!) #copepods in the Calanus genus and krill (euphausids to be fancy) take advantage of. Baleen #whales 🐋, commercially important fish and shrimp come to feed on these short, efficient #FoodWebs.

https://www.polarpod.fr/en/encyclopaedia/arctic/4-ocean-and-marine-life/3-arctic-plankton

Bright transparent shrimp-like copepod with long extended antennae and dark red eyespot stands out against a black background. Scale bar indicates it is about 6 mm long. Photo: Calanus finmarchicus, Russ Hopcroft, UAF/CoML.

Almost transparent shrimp-like copepod against a grey background with long antennae which are bright red in colour. Scale bar indicates it is almost 8 mm long. Photo: Calanus hyperboreus, Russ Hopcroft, UAF, CoML.

Starting the week with a new #preprint! This one's got a little bit of everything:
- #copepods , #parasites , and opportunistic thermal limit measurements
- #DIY lab equipment
- #metaanalysis

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.31.535176v1

#NewSpecies!
New copepod from the Pacific Ocean just surfaced:

Echinolaophonte musa

Treatment: http://treatment.plazi.org/id/1550C93D-4255-4830-9B5C-6952A27BA0BB
Publication: http://doi.org/10.3897/zse.99.90114
#Zoosyst_Evo

#FAIRdata
#science #taxonomy #ecology #biodiversity #nature #wildlife #conservation #animals #copepods #pacific #ocean

Sunday #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
#Zooplankton have amazing abilities to sense their environment. The setae on long extended antennae have mechanoreceptors & chemosensors (aesthetascs). #Copepods can smell and track a pheromone plume of many body lengths, or detect particular prey items. Very sophisticated behavior for this ecologically important uncharismatic microfauna.
This is an excellent review article on the chemical ecology of copepods. Highly recommended read. 📖
https://academic.oup.com/plankt/article/36/4/895/2963073

Mind blown right here: a marine photographer capturing the bright-colored plankton in a drop of seawater.

#oceanlife #seawater #copepods #photography #marinelife #marinephotography #tinystuff #microscopic

https://kottke.org/23/01/tiny-seawater-worlds

#copepods

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