Family MONODELLIDAE or HALOSBAENIDAE

Cave micro-shrimps

Code: None allocated

See Key to Families of Australian Aquatic Crustacea

An order of Malacostracan crustacean of uncertain family placement. Not a Decapod, but included also in that key because of the presence of a carapace. Thermosbaenacea may be recognised amongst the Crustaceans by the presence of a reduced carapace fused to the first thoracic segment and free above all other segments (expanded and formed as a dorsal pouch in females). The one Australian species, Halosbaena tulki Poore and Humphries, is known from a cave in North West Cape Peninsula, Western Australia. Elsewhere the order is confined to caves and to hot springs.

References:

Horwitz, P., Knott, B. and Williams, W.D. (1995) A Preliminary Key to the Malacostracan Families (Crustacea) found in Australian Inland Waters . Co-operative Research Centre for Freshwater Ecology Identification Guide No. 4., Albury, NSW.

Poore, G.A. and Humphreys, W.F. (1992) First record of Thermosbaenacea (Crustacea) from the Southern Hemisphere: a new species from a cave in tropical Western Australia. Invertebrate Taxonomy 6 : 719-725.