Pestarella tyrrhena
| Pestarella tyrrhena | |
|---|---|
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Subphylum: | Crustacea |
| Class: | Malacostraca |
| Order: | Decapoda |
| Family: | Callianassidae |
| Genus: | Pestarella |
| Species: | P. tyrrhena |
| Binomial name | |
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Pestarella tyrrhena (Petagna, 1792) |
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| Synonyms | |
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| External identifiers for Callianassa tyrrhena | |
|---|---|
| Encyclopedia of Life | 3064796 |
| ITIS | 552842 |
| NCBI | 576678 |
| WoRMS | 238027 |
| Also found in: | |
Pestarella tyrrhena (formerly Callianassa tyrrhena) is a species of thalassinidean crustacean (ghost shrimp or mud shrimp) which grows to a length of 70 mm (2.8 in). It lives in burrows in shallow sandy parts of the sea-bed in the Mediterranean Sea and northern Atlantic Ocean. It is the most common thalassinidean in the Mediterranean, and has been used as bait by fishermen for at least 200 years.
P. tyrrhena is a small crustacean, up to 70 millimetres (2.8 in) long, with a soft exoskeleton apart from two large, unequal claws. It is whitish or greenish-grey, with pink or blue spots. Because of its burrowing lifestyle, P. tyrrhena has small eyes on short stalks, and its maxillipeds can form an operculum; the telson is very short, and the rostrum is almost entirely absent.
Larval development is rapid and involves few stages. Eggs hatch into a zoeal stage, which is followed by a second zoea and then a megalopa stage before adulthood. This rapid development allows the larvae to settle down into their adult habitat of relatively undisturbed muddy substrates, before they have travelled too far as planktonic larvae. Larval development is retarded by low salinities and aided by warmer temperatures, giving P. tyrrhena a shorter reproductive season in the north of its range than in the south.
P. tyrrhena was first described from the Tyrrhenian Sea, and is found throughout the Mediterranean as well as in the Atlantic Ocean from Mauritania and the Canary Islands north to Ireland, in the Kattegat, and in the North Sea as far as southern Norway. Related species occur in the Black Sea, and P. tyrrhena avoids water of low salinity, such as estuaries and the Baltic Sea.
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