Current number of valid species: 18048

What is a copepod?

These small aquatic crustaceans are very diverse and are the most numerous metazoans in the water community ("metazoan" means all multi-celled animals). Copepod habitats range from fresh water to hypersaline conditions, from subterranean caves to water collected in bromeliad leaves or leaf litter on the ground and from streams, rivers, and lakes to the sediment layer in the open ocean. Their habitats also range from the highest mountains to the deepest ocean trenches and from the cold polar ice-water interface to the hot active hydrothermal vents. Copepods may be free-living, symbiotic, or internal or external parasites on almost every phylum of animals in water. The usual length of adults is 1-2 mm, but adults of some species may be as short as 0.2mm and others may be as long as 10mm or even longer in the case of parasites. Ecologically the planktonic copepods are important links in the aquatic food chain linking microscopic algal cells to juvenile fish to whales. Copepods also have the potential to act as control mechanisms for malaria by consuming mosquito larvae, and contrariwise are intermediate hosts of many human and animal parasites. Although they belong to a separate class of crustaceans, Branchiura (commonly referred to as fish lice) are dealt with here along with the Copepoda, since many copepod researchers also study these external parasites of fish and amphibians. Most live in freshwater but a few species are marine. Together the Copepoda and Bracnhiura comprise over 250 described families; 2,600 genera and over 21,000 described species (both valid and invalid, including senior and junior synonyms).

The Subclass Copepoda traditionally comprises 10 Orders**:

  1. Calanoida
  2. Cyclopoida
  3. Gelyelloida
  4. Harpacticoida
  5. Misophrioida
  6. Monstrilloida
  7. Mormonilloida
  8. Platycopioida
  9. Poecilostomatoida
  10. Siphonostomatoida

**There is uncertainty and scientific debate over the validity of some orders, in particular the Monstrilloida and Poecilostomatoida.

The Class Branchiura comprises 1 Family (the Argulidae) and 4 valid genera:

Argulus foliaceus
  1. Argulus
  2. Chonopeltis
  3. Dipteropeltis
  4. Dolops

Editorial board

Editors

T. Chad Walter
Smithsonian Institution; Department of Invertebrate Zoology
PO Box 37012, MRC 163
Washington, DC 20013-7012, USA


Geoff Boxshall
Natural History Museum; Department of Zoology
Cromwell Road
London, SW7 5BD, UK


Associate Editors

Family Oncaeidae
Ruth Böttger-Schnack
Moorsehdener Weg 8
24211 Rastorf-Rosenfeld, Germany

Families Diaixidae, Parkiidae, Phaennidae, Scolecitrichidae and Tharybidae
Frank D. Ferrari
Smithsonian Institution
Dept. Invertebrate Zoology
Museum Support Center, MRC 534
4210 Silver Hill Road
Suitland, MD 20746, USA

Parasitic copepods
Ju-shey Ho
California State University
Department of Biology
1250 Bellflower Blvd.
Long Beach, California 90840, USA

Family Asterocheridae and Dirivultidae
Slava Ivanenko
Moscow State Univesity
Department of Invertebrate Zoology, Biological Faculty
Leninskie Gory, 1-12
Moscow 119992, Russia

Distribution planktonic/hyperbenthic copepods
Juliana H.M. Kouwenberg
University of Amsterdam, Zoological Museum
Mauritskade 61
1092 AD Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Family Taenicanthidae
Danny Tang
The University of Western Australia
School of Animal Biology (M092)
35 Stirling Highway
Crawley Western Australia 6009 Australia

The Wilson Copepod Library

The bibliographic database was developed and is maintained by staff of the C.B. Wilson Copepod library, and contains all the known literature for copepods and branchiurans. At present over 53,700 bibliographic entries on copepods are in the database. Current staff members organizing the day to day operations of this Library are T. Chad Walter, Frank D. Ferrari, and Lana Ong. Janet Reid also provides significant input into this web site. We gratefully accept donations of literature on all aspects of the Copepoda, and request that you send us a copy of all your future publications. If you provide us with your pdf's or reprints in a timely fashion then we can quickly put your taxonomic information into the WoRMS database. The Monoculus Library is located at the Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg – DZMB,Suedstrand 44, Wilhelmshaven , D-6382, Germany, attn:  Pedro Martinez Arbizu.  For the Wislon Library contact Chad Walter.

Copepod Links for further information about copeopds.

To subscribe to the Copepod List Serve and join in discussions of strategic and key issues in the wide range of copepod research, send an email message with your name and address to:
copepoda@listas.usp.br

Below are a few other sites dealing with Copepods: [Use your web search engines and search on copepod for additional sites.]

This database was originally housed at the Smithsonian Institution, as the World of Copepods website, which was just a flat file database. That database was migrated into WoRMS since this is a relational database that allows for: linking synonymies, distributions, hosts, images, literature sources and specimen data. In addition, it allows for multiple editors to correct and edit data. In order to provide sufficient expert knowledge for maintaining the list, we have formed an editorial committee which will be editing and improving this database. This database will hopefully promote the stability in copepod nomenclature and act as a tool for highter taxonomic revisions and regional monographs and then provide a base link for other online databases that use copeopd nomenclature.

Citation

By downloading or consulting data from this website, the visitor acknowledges that he/she agrees to the following:

If data are extracted from this website for secondary analysis resulting in a publication, the website should be cited as follows:

If any data constitutes a substantial proportion of the records used in secondary analyses (i.e. more than 25% of the data are derived from this source, or the data are essential to arrive at the conclusion of the analysis), the authors/managers of the database should be contacted. It may be useful to contact us directly in case there are additional data that may strengthen the analysis or there are features of the data that are important to consider but may not have been apparent from the metadata.