Shelled crustaceans - Zoological and botanical plate - Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur

Reproduction engraving of: Shelled Crustaceans

Original title Thoracostraca - Panzerkrebse

Alima Poster - Arthropods of the main class of Crustacea, Legion of Thoracostraca

Illustration from the book Kunstformen der Natur, which is a collection of artistic lithographs of natural sciences published by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel between 1899 and 1904.

This naturalistic illustration is part of an overall style inspired by Ernst Haeckel, which greatly influenced the emerging Art Nouveau movement at the beginning of the ^20th century. This work, illustrating the impressive beauty and great diversity of the biological world, was complemented by a certain amount of scientific information, some excerpts of which are reproduced below.

This information is over 120 years old and some of it may be outdated!

Scientific classification:

 Phylum of Arthropods (Articulata)
Main class of Crustacea
Shrimp Class (Caridonia)
Legion of Shelled Crustaceans (Thoracostraca)

Scientific notice (extract) accompanying the poster print of Thoracostraca - Shelled crustaceans :

The legion of armored crustaceans (Thoracostraca) includes the largest and most evolved forms of the crustacean phylum, characterized by a dorsal shield or "cephalothorax carapace" (Cephalothorax), which protects the head and thorax from above. It contains the two orders Decapoda and Stomatopoda. The segmentation of the body is always the same despite all the differences between the many individual genera; the body is constantly composed of 20 rings or segments, and each segment bears a pair of appendages, with the sole exception of the last, the caudal segment (Telson). Of these 20 rings, 5 belong to the head, 8 to the thorax, and 7 to the abdomen. The Arthrostracans (Arthrostraca) show the same segmentation, which is why they are grouped with the armored crustaceans in the subclass Malacostraca (Malacostraca). However, in the Arthrostracans, both the Amphipods (Amphipoda) and the Isopoda (Isopoda), the eyes are fixed in the head (sessile eyes, Edriophthalma); in contrast, the large compound eyes of the armored crustaceans are mounted on long, freely movable stalks (stalked eyes, Podophthalma). Of the two orders of armored crustaceans, the Decapoda (Fig. 1-6) is by far the richest in forms; in them, all eight thoracic segments are fused; they bear three pairs of jaw-legs in front, followed by five pairs of thoracic legs. Here we find the long-tailed crustaceans, Macroura (Macrura: crayfish, lobster, shrimps, lobsters), and the short-tailed crabs (Brachyura; cf. Plate 86). In the Stomatopoda (Stomatopoda; Fig. 7-10), on the other hand, the three posterior thoracic segments are free and bear three pairs of thoracic legs; the five anterior ones bear jaw-legs. Most of the armored crustaceans undergo in their youth a series of very remarkable metamorphoses; these metamorphoses are associated with very considerable transformations of the singular larval forms. Our plate represents only such larvae, namely Fig. 1-6 of Decapoda, 7-10 of Stomatopoda. In the common crayfish (Astacus) and some others, metamorphosis has been lost by an abbreviated development; the young hatch from the egg in a developed form.

Species present on the naturalist board of Shelled Crustaceans - Alima :

• Lucifer typus
• Penaeus muelleri
• Mastigopus dorsipinalis
• Elaphocaris dohrnii
• Phyllosoma palinuri
• Carinus maenas
• Gonerichthus chiragra
• Alima gracilis
• Alima Bidens