This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies.
I accept this policy
Find out more here
This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies.
I accept this policy
Find out more here
Brill’s MyBook program is exclusively available on BrillOnline Books and Journals. Students and scholars affiliated with an institution that has purchased a Brill E-Book on the BrillOnline platform automatically have access to the MyBook option for the title(s) acquired by the Library. Brill MyBook is a print-on-demand paperback copy which is sold at a favorably uniform low price.
Five immature copepodid stages of Pseudocyclops schminkei are described. The adult prosome is completed during the molt to copepodid III; the adult urosome during the molt of the last immature stage to CVI. Thoracic somites 5 and 6, bearing swimming legs 4 and 5, are transformed from narrow somites of the urosome of copepodids I and II into broad somites of the prosome during the molts to copepodid II and III, respectively. The exopod of antenna 2 is patterned during the copepodid phase of development. The basis of the maxilliped of copepodids includes two well-developed endites. Buds of swimming legs 3 and 4 do not have apical setae but rather attenuations [cf. spiniform outgrowths] of the bud, in number corresponding to the setae of many calanoids. Transformed limbs of swimming legs 1-4 bear the maximum number of setae reported for these limbs among copepods. Sexual dimorphism is evident at copepodid IV in the morphology and armature of leg 5. The endopod of the male swimming leg 5 does not articulate with the basis at copepodids IV and V. Von Vaupel Klein’s Organ, an apomorphy for calanoids, is assumed to have been present on the ancestral pseudocyclopid and is secondarily lost on its extant species. An analysis of several of these characters suggests that Pseudocyclopidae is the oldest extant calanoid family.