| Abstract from DBPedia | Crustaceans (Crustacea, /krʌˈsteɪʃə/) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean group can be treated as a subphylum under the clade Mandibulata. It is now well accepted that the hexapods emerged deep in the Crustacean group, with the completed group referred to as Pancrustacea. Some crustaceans (Remipedia, Cephalocarida, Branchiopoda) are more closely related to insects and the other hexapods than they are to certain other crustaceans. The 67,000 described species range in size from Stygotantulus stocki at 0.1 mm (0.004 in), to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span of up to 3.8 m (12.5 ft) and a mass of 20 kg (44 lb). Like other arthropods, crustaceans have an exoskeleton, which they moult to grow. They are distinguished from other groups of arthropods, such as insects, myriapods and chelicerates, by the possession of biramous (two-parted) limbs, and by their larval forms, such as the nauplius stage of branchiopods and copepods. Most crustaceans are free-living aquatic animals, but some are terrestrial (e.g. woodlice, sandhoppers), some are parasitic (e.g. Rhizocephala, fish lice, tongue worms) and some are sessile (e.g. barnacles). The group has an extensive fossil record, reaching back to the Cambrian. More than 7.9 million tons of crustaceans per year are produced by fishery or farming for human consumption, most of it being shrimp and prawns. Krill and copepods are not as widely fished, but may be the animals with the greatest biomass on the planet, and form a vital part of the food chain. The scientific study of crustaceans is known as carcinology (alternatively, malacostracology, crustaceology or crustalogy), and a scientist who works in carcinology is a carcinologist.甲殻類（こうかくるい、Crustacean、学名：Crustacea）は、節足動物を大まかに分ける分類群の一つ。分類学上は甲殻亜門（こうかくあもん）とされる。エビ、カニ、オキアミ、フジツボ、ミジンコなどが含まれる。 およそ7万種が記載され、深海から海岸、河川、湿地まで、あらゆる水環境に分布するが、主に海で多様化している。陸上の生活に完全に適応しているのはワラジムシ類とダンゴムシ類など僅かである。 系統関係については、21世紀現在、汎甲殻類説が最も有力視されている。すなわち甲殻類は六脚類と共に単系統群の汎甲殻類を成し、六脚類は側系統群の甲殻類から分岐したとされる。 (Source: http://dbpedia.org/resource/Crustacean) |
