Modes of development of marine crustaceans and other marine invertebrates include presence or absence of a larval stage, of larval feeding, and of maternal protection of offspring. These different developmental modes impose different compromises (trade-offs) between the number of offspring and their size or the extent of maternal protection. Crustaceans differ from many marine animals in not shedding eggs prior to fertilization, which eliminates the complication of selection on size of eggs as a target for sperm. Features shared with marine invertebrates of several phyla include rare and ancient origins of feeding larvae, irreversible losses of a feeding larval stage, a constraint on brooding imposed by embryos’ need for oxygen, and possible benefits from slower development of protected embryos. Crustaceans differ, however, in having a diverse exoskeletal tool kit that has provided unusual capabilities. Nauplii and zoeae are diverse in form, behavior, and habitat, despite each being nominally one type of larva. Nauplii, as feeding larvae, have adapted to both the benthos and plankton. Settling stages (cyprids and decapodids) with enhanced speed have evolved twice. Some very large adults can supply their large broods with oxygen. Capacity for defense of offspring and home has led a few times to eusociality. The need to molt to grow and change form imposes episodic risk and growth and, in some cases, links evolution of egg size and size at metamorphosis. Crustaceans’ diverse life histories enable comparisons with broad implications for marine invertebrates: opportunity for dispersal is similar for larvae and adults of some crustaceans, demonstrating that marine larvae need not be adaptations for dispersal; development from very small eggs is enabled by less equipment needed for first larval feeding and also by postlarval stages being parasites; eggs shed into the water suffer greater mortality than planktonic larvae or brooded eggs, yet some planktonic crustaceans depend on benthic resting eggs for persistence of populations; larvae escape predation in diverse ways, and bigger larvae are not consistently safer; predation near the seafloor makes settlement a risky stage. Parallels with other taxa are numerous, but the crustacean exoskeletal tool kit has conferred unusual evolutionary opportunities and constraints. Even among marine crustaceans, however, evolutionary options for life histories differ among clades because of rare evolutionary origins of traits of larvae and mothers and biased evolutionary transitions in those traits.
Scaling of olfactory antennae of the terrestrial hermit crabs Coenobita rugosus and Coenobita perlatus during ontogeny
