Fairy shrimp are about 1/2 to 1 1/2 inch crustaceans swimming upside down. They have two sets of antennae and 11 pairs of leaf-like swimming legs. The colors of the shrimp are determined by the substances of the food source in the pool which the shrimp inhabit, it is usually constant among the beings of the waterway.
Male shrimp have an enlarged second antenna used to catch the female during mating. Female fairy shrimp often have a litter sack on their abdomen. There are normally more females than males. They are capable of three states of movement; hidden at the bottom of the water, zipping quickly and drifting gradually. The shrimp push themselves with a wave-like anterior-posterior thrashing motion of their legs. This feat is completed by the propeller motion of the outermost part of the legs.
Fairy shrimp reproduction is introduced when the male hooks the female with its second, grasping antennae. Though the male and females swim embraced together for several days, the process of copulation only takes minutes. Interestingly enough, hours after mating the male fairy shrimp die. The female shrimp carries both fertilized and parthenogenesis eggs on the outer-side of her body in its litter sack for several days before being freed to fall to the bottom of the water, or the eggs may stay attached until the female dies. The number of eggs a female creates in a clutch differs from 10 to 150. Several clutches can often be created during the life of a female.
Females can yield two kinds of eggs, thin shelled "summer" eggs and thick shelled "winter" eggs. The kind of egg created is determined by the number of males in the same water source; summer eggs will be made if there is a scarcity of males in the population. Summer eggs hatch qui...
... middle of paper ...
.... Also, the wood frogs and mole salamanders breeding in the waterways haven’t reclaimed their regular craving after winter hibernation and, thus, are not major predators. However, these amphibians, caddis fly larvae, dytiscid larvae, other insects, and, especially, waterfowl who utilize the pool, often do prey upon fairy shrimp. Because fairy shrimp live in short-term marshes there are no predatory fish. The abundance of nourishment is less of an issue in the population of shrimp than in other organisms. The need of one part per million dissolved oxygen is the limiting aspect in the size of shrimp communities.
Works Cited
Peckersky, Barbara, Freshwater Macro invertebrates of North America, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. Pennak, Robert W., Freshwater Invertebrates of The United States, 3rd Ed., Protozoa to Mollusca, New York: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 1989
Because of its size and abundance, T. californicus is commonly regarded as the insect of the sea. This creature is generally very small, from 1-3 mm in size as adults. They are cylindrically shaped, and have a segmented body (head, thorax, abdomen) though no noticeable division between body regions (Powlik 1966). Each segment of the body has a pair of legs. They use their 'legs' to propel themselves through the water in short rapid jerks. They have 2 pairs of long feathered antennae, a chitin us exoskeleton and a single eye in the middle of their head, this simple eye can only differentiate between light and dark.
Zebra Mussels also known as Dreissena polymorpha are small freshwater mollusk that have been invading America’s rivers and lakes. They originated from the Balkans, Poland and Soviet Union. In 1988, they were found in a small body of water connecting Lake Huron and Lake Erie, known as Lake St. Clair. Biologists believe that European port in the ballast water of a ship, dis...
The North American brine shrimp goes through several stages in development before reaching adulthood. The brine shrimp is first encased in a protective capsule within a female brine shrimp’s brood sac (Drewes, C, 2006). Here, egg development rapidly...
Daphnia, commonly known as water fleas, are tiny crustaceans which live in water. The diameter of adult female bodies is approximately 3-5 mm. The upper skeleton is transparent, making the internal organs visible. This allows the heart rate of the Daphnia to be calculated by observing them under a microscope.
Monotreme Reproductive Biology and Behavior. Monotremes are mammals that are oviparous, or egg-laying. There are only 3 extant species of monotremes: the playtpus and two species of echidna. Their reproductive systems are highly specialized to facilitate both the production of eggs and milk.
Female loggerheads generally reproduce between the ages of 17 and 33 after which they can travel thousands of miles to reach what is called their natal beach, the beach where they hatched, to lay their own eggs. The mother will create a nest every 12-17 days using her back legs to dig a deep hole in the sand. These holes tend to be about 3 feet deep. Then she will proceed to lay on average between 100 and 130 eggs, after w...
When someone says the word octopus, an image of an eight legged invertebrate comes to mind. The body structure of a mature octopus is very interesting. Octopuses are extremely intelligent. They have excellent memory can use tools, and are great problem solvers. Only birds and mammals are known to be smarter. Each one of their tentacles, which are used for prying open clam shells, has two rows of suckers that can give them a pretty good grip. An octopus also tastes with its tentacles. An octopus’s third right arm, also called hectocotyli, is also its penis which a male octopus will use to mate at one or two years of age. The only part of an octopus that cannot move or squeeze through small spaces is its beak where it consumes food. This is used for biting and also breaking things apart. Did you know that octopi have three hearts? This is because these sea creatures have extra legs and three hearts are necessary for better bl...
Fox, R. 2001. Invertebrate Anatomy OnLine: Artemia Franciscana. Lander University. http://webs.lander.edu/rsfox/invertebrates/artemia.html, retrieved February 13, 2011.
Transferring sperm depends on the species of damselfly because the sex organs are particularly elaborate and specific to the each species. Organs in the male damselflies that allow the end of its’ abdomen to attach to the back of the females’ head correspond between each individual species, making mating between separate species nearly impossible.
I revisited my secondary school biology and physics lesson by reading “Mantis Shrimp” by The Oatmeal. I glance at the story I could vividly still remember the lesson on cones and rods in the eye and the light spectrum in optical physics classes. I remember, as a kid, the colorful images in the story would have drawn my attention. As an adult, I was frustrated by the colorful nature of the entire story and took it for children literature and only glance through. Two days later in trying to understand why the author says mantis shrimp is his or her new favorite animal, I discover an excellent relationship between image, symbol, and the word.
The body of the shrimp is two parts the thorax which is the body and the head , the body pieces are connected by the cephalorax and a narrow abdomen. The mouth if the shrimp works with the gills so they can be used. Shrimp have a hard shell that keeps everything together and protects them, its legs, eyes, and rostrum grow out of the hard shell. The use their nose or a sharp peak which there there basically the sing thing to protect their self from all the bigger and other animals it come in contact with and it sticks them with and it has a length that the shrimp lets out to be able to reach where the shrimp wants to get the other animals. Shrimp have some similarities to fish like when they travel, breed, and eat its usually done in schools (schools area group of the species). A (shrimp) single female is capable of producing a large number of offspring, one shrimp can lay up to one million eggs in a single session, take two weeks to hatch it takes two weeks to
The battle between sexual and asexual reproduction is a competition that has been ongoing for millions of years. Somewhere along the way due to its higher level of genetic variation, sexual reproduction was able to overcome the two fold advantage of asexual reproduction, and now dominates reproduction in organisms. However, some types of organisms such as worms and corals have acquired the ability to reproduce both sexually and asexually. The purpose of this paper is to explore the differences in asexual and sexual reproduction both from a biological and an evolutionary standpoint and to explain why evolution has made it possible for soft corals to reproduce both sexually and asexually.
The typical mating season occurs during June going on to October. When they do mate, the female platypus sprouts an average of two to three eggs, unlike the preponderance of mammals, they generate eggs (Smith ). Only four other kinds of mammals lay eggs, and most of the species are echidnas. This is incredibly spectacular and eminently rare. The duck-billed platypus takes up one fifth of all of the monotremes, the other four species are types of echidnas. This makes the platypus even more unique because it is the only one of its kind (Monotremes Egg-Laying
...ecial cells, the queen puts the eggs from which a new queen will emerge. After the larvae develop from the eggs, the cells are covered with wax.
When the colony becomes well established, the queen begins to lay some eggs that develop into queens and males. It takes a few years before a colony becomes large enough to send out winged males and young queens to start new colonies. The cycle will now begin all over again. Nests come in all shapes and sizes. One tropical species built a nest that extended forty feet below the surface of the ground.