Family ARTEMIIDAE Grochowski, 1896

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• Artemiidae Grochowski, M. 1896. Ueber eine neue im Süsswasser lebende Species von Artemia. Verhandlungen der Kaiserlich-Königlichen Zoologisch-Botanischen Gesellschaft in Wien 45: 95.

Introduction

The Artemiidae contain the single genus Artemia of about eight species and innumerable varieties and strains. It has a worldwide distribution, including Australia.

Males are distinctive because the second antennal distal segment is flattened and enlarged mesially and the penes bases lack processes and spines (Criel & Macrae 2002). They share some features with Parartemia, and hence some authors group them together as the suborder Artemiina (Weekers et al. 2002), but the above features are distinctive.

Australia has two species, largely introduced to salt works, but probably also A. parthenogenetica is native to coastal WA (McMaster 2002) and is spreading inland (B. Knott, pers. comm; J. Davis, pers.comm.).

General References

Criel, G. & Macrae, T. 2002. Artemia, Morphology and Structure. pp. 1-37 in Abatzopoulos, T., Beardmore, J., Clegg, J. & Sorgeloos, P. (eds). Artemia: Basic and Applied Biology. Dordrecht : Kluwer Academic Publisher 286 pp.

McMaster, K., Savage, A., Finston, T., Johnson, M.S. & Knott, B. 2002. Has Artemia parthenogenetica been introduced into Western Australia through human agency? Paper present at the 8th International Conference on Salt Lakes, Zhemehuzhny, Russia, 23-26 July, 2002.

Weekers, P.H.H., Murugan, G., Vanfleteren, J.R., Belk, D. & Dumont, H.J. 2002. Phylogenetic analysis of anostracans (Branchiopoda: Anostraca) inferred from nuclear 18S ribosomal DNA. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 25: 535-544

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