Habitats for large branchiopods in the agricultural landscape of the Mureş Floodplain Natural Park: how long will they last?

In the last two hundred years, the Mureş River Floodplain has suffered major changes caused by dike constructions, meander cutting, and by the transformation of the natural landscape into an agricultural one. In this environmental context, we wanted to find out the degree to which large branchiopod species still survive in the Mureş Floodplain area. Every stagnant aquatic habitat encountered in 2019 in the Mureş Floodplain Natural Park was sampled. For the habitats where more species co-occur, urgent preservation actions must be taken. Most of the species prefer open habitats and have survived in the wheel ruts on agricultural lands. In the absence of natural habitats, the importance of this habitat type becomes a major one. The forest advantages species related to shady habitats, such as Chirocephalus diaphanus. We have found several individuals in the park that showed black spots on their bodies, characteristic of the black disease of fairy shrimp. The presence of the disease only in the populations from wheel ruts suggests that vehicles which make these ruts, could be the carriers of the disease.

First record of the Clam Shrimp Leptestheria venezuelica Daday, 1923 (Crustacea: Brachiopoda: Spinicaudata) from the North of Colombia

Large branchiopods has been distributed in temporary waters around the world, but the knowledge about these organisms in Colombia is poorly known, especially leptesteriids, we report a new record of the Clam Shrimp Leptestheria venezuelica Daday, 1923 from the north of Colombia.

A Review of Recently Discovered Remains of the Pleistocene Branchiopods (Anostraca, Notostraca) from NE Siberia and Arctic Canada

In this study, we examine, identify, and discuss fossil remains of large branchiopod crustaceans collected from six sites across the Beringian region (north-eastern Asia and north-western North America). Eggs and mandibles from Anostraca and Notostraca, as well as a notostracan telson fragment and a possible notostracan second maxilla, were collected from both paleosediment samples and also from large mammal hair. The remains of large branchiopods and other species that are limited to seasonally astatic aquatic habitats (temporary wetlands) could be useful indicator organisms of paleoecological conditions. Different recent large branchiopod species have very different ecological preferences, with each species limited to specific geochemical component tolerance ranges regarding various salinity, cation, and gypsum concentrations. Our purpose is to bring the potential usefulness of these common fossil organisms to the attention of paleoecologists.

On the Biodiversity Hotspot of Large Branchiopods (Crustacea, Branchiopoda) in the Central Paroo in Semi-Arid Australia

Biodiversity is central to the structure and functioning of communities including those of temporary water bodies. Worldwide the large branchiopod component commonly consists up to about six species instantaneously per site and twice that number across the surrounding district. Where these figures reach eight to ten species per site and about twice that number per district, the term diversity hotspot is sometimes used. In eastern Australia, biogeographical factors have facilitated a rich large branchiopod fauna ca 80 species and locally within 500 km2 of the central Paroo in northwestern New South Wales where a rarely diverse and abundant array of habitats supports at least 38 species, though the maximum per site syntopically is still near 10 species — we suggest it be termed a super hotspot.