Jesús Gil

1. Types of crustaceans
2. Physical characteristics
3. Reproduction
4. Environment
 They form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes
such familiar animals
as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill, woodlice,
and barnacles. The crustacean group is usually treated as
a subphylum, and thanks to recent molecular studies it is
now well accepted that the crustacean group
is paraphyletic, and comprises all animals in
the Pancrustacea clade other than hexapods. Some
crustaceans are more closely related to insects and other
hexapods than they are to certain other crustaceans.
Crustaceans are invertebrates with a hard exoskeleton (carapace), a
segmented body that is bilaterally symmetrical, more than four pairs of
jointed appendages ("legs") and an open circulatory system (the "blood"
does not flow in a closed loop). They also have eyes usually on stalks, a
primitive ventral nerve cord and "brain" (ganglia near the antennae), a
digestive system which is a straight tube for grinding food and a pair of
digestive glands. Gills are used for respiration and they have a pair of
green glands to excrete wastes (found near the base of the antennae).
The head, the thorax and the abdomen. In some species the head and
thorax are fused together to form a cephalothorax which is covered by a
single large carapace.
 Most Crustaceans are either male or female and
reproduce sexually. A small number, including
barnacles, are hermaphrodites. In other species,
viable eggs are produced by a female without
needing to be fertilized by a male.
 The larvae metamorphose through a number of
stages before they become adults.
 The majority of crustaceans are aquatic, living in either
marine or freshwater environments, but a few groups
have adapted to life on land, such as terrestrial
crabs, terrestrial hermit crabs, and woodlice. Marine
crustaceans are as ubiquitous in the oceans as insects are
on land