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...

Setae are vital in grooming activities and aiding in the removal of epibionts and sedimentary fouling from the body surfaces of decapod crustaceans. Thus, the setal structures and their arrangement on the grooming appendages and sensory structures of the commercially important shrimp, Macrobrachium rosenbergii, were examined using scanning electron microscopy. Macrobrachium rosenbergii is exten...

Multimodal, higher-order sensory integration in decapod crustaceans occurs in local interneurons (parasol cells) within a structure in the lateral protocerebrum, the hemiellipsoid body, which is located dorsal to the terminal medulla. The hemiellipsoid body is targeted by projection neuron inputs by means of the olfactory globular tract from bilateral deutocerebral neuropils, the accessory lobe...

Understanding and predicting the consequences of warming for complex ecosystems and indeed individual species remains a major ecological challenge. Here, we investigated the effect of increased seawater temperatures on the metabolic and consumption rates of five distinct marine species. The experimental species reflected different trophic positions within a typical benthic East Atlantic food we...

The Australian redclaw crayfish (Cherax quadricarinatus) has recently received attention as an emerging candidate for sustainable aquaculture production in Australia and worldwide. More importantly, C. quadricarinatus serves as a good model organism for the commercially important group of decapod crustaceans as it is distributed worldwide, easy to maintain in the laboratory and its reproductive...

Standardised diets and trophic level (T L) estimates were calculated for 75 ray species from the suborders Myliobatoidei (67 spp.) and Torpedinoidei (8 spp.). Decapod crustaceans (31.71 ± 3.92%) and teleost fishes (16.45 ± 3.43%) made the largest contribution to the standardised diet of the Myliobatoidei. Teleost fishes (37.40 ± 16.09%) and polychaete worms (31.96 ± 14.22%) were the most promin...

Members of the insulin family of hormones are generally not regarded as gender-specific, although there is sporadic evidence for the possible involvement of insulin pathways in sexual differentiation. In crustaceans, sexual differentiation is controlled by the androgenic gland (AG), an organ unique to males. To date, attempts to identify active AG factors in decapods through either classical pu...

Species richness and abundance of epibenthic fishes and decapod crustaceans were quantified with daytime beam trawl tows and throw traps to provide information on nekton assemblages in Zostera marina and unvegetated sandy habitats in northern latitudes. Sampling at randomly selected stations with a 1.0-m beam trawl occurred in eelgrass (Zostera marina) and unvegetated sandy substrates of two mi...

Proteome maps of hepatopancreas (midgut gland) and ovarian tissues of the crustacean, Cancer pagurus (Decapoda; edible crab) have been produced by 2D-PAGE and identification of proteins, following trypsin proteolysis, by electrospray MS/MS and database searching. Owing to the lack of sequence information on proteins and fully sequenced genomes amongst the decapod crustaceans and given the evolu...

Mitotically active regions persist in the brains of decapod crustaceans throughout their lifetimes, as they do in many vertebrates. The most well-studied of these regions in decapods occurs within a soma cluster, known as cluster 10, located in the deutocerebrum. Cluster 10 in crayfish and lobsters is composed of the somata of two anatomically and functionally distinct classes of projection neu...