Portal:Arthropods

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Arthropod

Arthropods are the largest phylum of animals and include the insects, arachnids, crustaceans, and others. Arthropods are characterised by the possession of a segmented body with appendages on each segment. They have a dorsal heart and a ventral nervous system. All arthropods are covered by a hard exoskeleton made of chitin, a polysaccharide, which provides physical protection and resistance to desiccation. Periodically, an arthropod sheds this covering when it moults. More than 80% of described living animal species are arthropods, with over a million modern species described and a fossil record reaching back to the late proterozoic era. Arthropods are common throughout marine, freshwater, terrestrial, and even aerial environments, as well as including various symbiotic and parasitic forms. They range in size from microscopic plankton (~¼ mm) up to forms several metres long.
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Abludomelita obtusata
The crustaceans (Crustacea) are a large group of arthropods, comprising approximately 52,000 described species , and are usually treated as a subphylum . They include various familiar animals, such as lobsters, crabs, shrimp, crayfish and barnacles. The majority are aquatic, living in either fresh water or marine environments, but a few groups have adapted to terrestrial life, such as terrestrial crabs, terrestrial hermit crabs and woodlice. The majority are motile, moving about independently, although a few taxa are parasitic and live attached to their hosts (including sea lice, fish lice, whale lice, tongue worms, and Cymothoa exigua, all of which may be referred to as "crustacean lice"), and adult barnacles live a sessile life — they are attached head-first to the substrate and cannot move independently.

The scientific study of crustaceans is known as carcinology. Other names for carcinology are malacostracology, crustaceology and crustalogy, and a scientist who works in carcinology is a carcinologist, crustaceologist or crustalogist.

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Garden orb weaver
Credit: Fir0002

Predation is an interaction between organisms (animals) in which one organism captures and feeds upon another called the prey. Although predation most often refers to carnivory, in ecology it can also include many other types of feeding behaviors including parasitism, parasitoidism, and herbivory.

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    1. Create article for each family
    2. Ensure all family articles are taxonomically consistent
      1. Ensure all articles between the order and family rank are taxonomically consistent
      2. Ensure all articles between family and genus rank are taxonomically consistent
    3. Create articles for all species and for needed genera. Many species, however, are virtually undescribed.
    4. Emphasise the identifying aspects of each category. Please concentrate on features that are observable without dissection or microscope, and remember to link to definitions of specialist terms used! (See complete tasklist)
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    For more information on classification, see arthropod classification, crustacean, arachnid classification, insect classification, Myriapoda and trilobite.

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