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World of Copepods

Current number of accepted species: These small aquatic crustaceans are very diverse and are the most numerous metazoans in the water community ("metazoan" means all multi-celled animals). Copepod habitats range from fresh water to hypersaline conditions, from subterranean caves to water collected in bromeliad leaves or leaf litter on the ground and from streams, rivers, and lakes to the sediment layer in the open ocean. Their habitats also range from the highest mountains to the deepest ocean trenches and from the cold polar ice-water interface to the hot active hydrothermal vents. Copepods may be free-living, symbiotic, or internal or external parasites on almost every phylum of animals in water. The usual length of adults is 1-2 mm, but adults of some species may be as short as 0.2mm and others may be as long as 10mm or even longer in the case of parasites. Ecologically the planktonic copepods are important links in the aquatic food chain linking microscopic algal cells to juvenile fish to whales. Copepods also have the potential to act as control mechanisms for malaria by consuming mosquito larvae, and contrariwise are intermediate hosts of many human and animal parasites. Although they belong to a separate class of crustaceans, Branchiura (commonly referred to as fish lice) are dealt with here along with the Copepoda, since many copepod researchers also study these external parasites of fish and amphibians. Most live in freshwater but a few species are marine. Together the Copepoda and Bracnhiura comprise over 250 described families; 2,600 genera and over 21,000 described species (both valid and invalid, including senior and junior synonyms).

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