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Structure and habits of living branchiopod crustaceans and their bearing on the interpretation of fossil forms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2011

Geoffrey Fryer
Geoffrey Fryer
Affiliation:
Freshwater Biological Association, The Ferry House, Ambleside, Cumbria LA22 OLP, England.
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Abstract

Branchiopods are primitive crustaceans whose history extends back at least to the Devonian, yet some are highly successful today. Most fossil branchiopods do not show many features that lead to an understanding of function, but the Devonian lipostracan Lepidocaris is an exception. Recent work on living branchiopods, especially anostracans and anomopod cladocerans, enables Lepidocaris to be considered as a living animal. Work on extant anostracan nauplii also makes it possible to deduce how its larval stages swam and collected food.

Other early crustaceans are briefly considered and comments are made on the concept of “living fossils”. While rates of morphological and genomic evolution are often discordant, the concept is still useful. Some branchiopods, such as the Notostraca, display remarkable morphological stasis: on the basis of morphology, a Triassic and a present-day form appear to be conspecific. The latter may be referred to as a “living fossil”.

The outstanding morphological stasis of the crustacean nauplius is noted. Its existence in Cambrian times, deducible from its distribution among modern taxa, has been confirmed by Müller's finds. Such stasis, involving part of the genome of organisms whose adults display enormous adaptive radiation, has persisted with relatively small modifications since before the commencement of the entire radiation of vertebrates.

Keywords

evolution“living fossils”naupliistasis.
Type
Living forms and their bearing on the interpretation of fossils
Information
Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh , Volume 76 , Issue 2-3: Fossil Anthropods as Living Animals , 1985 , pp. 103 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1985

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