Still yet more water fleas
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Olympusman
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- Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2012 12:31 pm
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Olympusman
- Posts: 5042
- Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2012 12:31 pm
Water fleas
Clado,
What are your reference resources? What I have are very limited.
What are your reference resources? What I have are very limited.
Michael Reese Much FRMS EMS Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA
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microthings
- Posts: 35
- Joined: Tue Jul 15, 2014 6:14 am
What are your reference resources?
I mostly use: Die Haplopoda und Cladocera Mitteleuropas von Dietrich Flößner. But I have some more literature about water fleas. I am no expert on water fleas but I know that it is a very diffecult group for identification so I am carefull in this matter.
Identification of water fleas is difficult for some reasons:
1 Most keys are based on adult females. Very often a water flea under the microscope is not adult and sometimes it is a male.
2 A female with an ephippium (result of gamogenetic reproduction) looks rather different.
3 Cyclomorfism occurs, caused by ecological circomstances. For instance in the Daphnia group.
4 Local forms occur, the same species in an other place may have a different form.
5 To make it still more difficult there is interspecies hybridisation which leads to still more polymorfism. In the Daphnia group this happens often.
For all this reasons it is not easy to identify water fleas, in particular the genus Daphnia.
Nowadays there is much informationon Internet but a lot of used names are false.
This are reasons why I am careful before I give a definite name to a water flea.
I mostly use: Die Haplopoda und Cladocera Mitteleuropas von Dietrich Flößner. But I have some more literature about water fleas. I am no expert on water fleas but I know that it is a very diffecult group for identification so I am carefull in this matter.
Identification of water fleas is difficult for some reasons:
1 Most keys are based on adult females. Very often a water flea under the microscope is not adult and sometimes it is a male.
2 A female with an ephippium (result of gamogenetic reproduction) looks rather different.
3 Cyclomorfism occurs, caused by ecological circomstances. For instance in the Daphnia group.
4 Local forms occur, the same species in an other place may have a different form.
5 To make it still more difficult there is interspecies hybridisation which leads to still more polymorfism. In the Daphnia group this happens often.
For all this reasons it is not easy to identify water fleas, in particular the genus Daphnia.
Nowadays there is much informationon Internet but a lot of used names are false.
This are reasons why I am careful before I give a definite name to a water flea.