Latest Thecostraca Stories

Among the greatest mysteries in zoology for more than a century have been vaguely shrimp-like creatures known as y-larvae. Although these microscopic beasts are clearly young crustaceans, no one knew what the adult forms looked like. Now researchers may have solved this puzzle by dosing the y-larvae with a hormone that forced them to go through a growth spurt. The result - simple, pulsing, slug-like masses of cells that were "mind-blowing" to the...

First identified in 1899, y-larvae have been one of the greatest zoological mysteries for over a century. No one has ever found an adult of these puzzling crustaceans, despite the plethora of these larvae in plankton, leading generations of marine zoologists to wonder just what y-larvae grow up to be. A study published in BioMed Central's open access journal, BMC Biology, reports the transformation of the larvae into a previously unseen, wholly un-crustacean-like, parasitic form.Y larvae, or...