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Species of crustacean From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Boeckella palustris is a species of copepod found in South America. It inhabits shallow pools, including the highest body of water ever to have yielded a crustacean, at an altitude of 5,930 m (19,460 ft) in the Andes. It was described independently by two scientists in 1955, using material brought back by different European expeditions to the same region.
Boeckella palustris | |
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Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Arthropoda |
Class: | Copepoda |
Order: | Calanoida |
Family: | Centropagidae |
Genus: | Boeckella |
Species: | B. palustris |
Binomial name | |
Boeckella palustris (Harding, 1955) | |
Synonyms [1] | |
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Males of B. palustris are 1.5–2.3 millimetres (0.059–0.091 in) long, and females 1.9–2.8 mm (0.075–0.110 in).[2] The antennules are relatively short.[2] B. palustris can be distinguished from other members of the genus Boeckella by the form of the fifth leg in males.[2]
Boeckella palustris has a Páramo–Punan distribution,[3] being found in southern Peru, and close to the border between Bolivia and Chile.[2] It lives in "small, shallow bodies of water", a habitat it shares with Boeckella calcaris.[2]
Boeckella palustris shares the record for the crustacean living at the highest altitude with the fairy shrimp Branchinecta brushi; both were found on December 13, 1988 in the same pool at an altitude of 5,930 metres (19,460 ft) near the summit of the stratovolcano Cerro Paniri (22.08°S 68.25°W) in the Antofagasta Region of Chile.[4] The only higher record, which claimed that Branchinecta paludosa occurred at 97,000 feet (30,000 m) is "almost certainly a typographical error".[4]
Boeckella palustris was originally described as Pseudoboeckella palustris by John Philip Harding in 1955, using material gathered by the Percy Sladen Trust Expedition to Lake Titicaca in 1937.[5] The genus Pseudoboeckella was subsumed into Boeckella in 1992 by Ian A. E. Bayly of Monash University, Australia, as no reliable character could be found to distinguish the two.[2] The species was independently described as Pseudoboeckella peruviensis in 1955 by Heinz Löffler using material from a 1953–1954 expedition to the Andes under Hans Kinzl,[6] but Harding's description has priority, having been published on July 29, 1955, eleven weeks before Löffler's paper was read, on October 13, 1955.[2] The species epithet palustris is Latin for "of the marsh" and indicates its common habitat.[7]
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