Order PODOCOPIDA Sars, 1866
Introduction
The Podocopida have undergone an extensive post-Palaeozoic evolutionary radiation. The living taxa of this group also inhabit a range of environments: deep oceans, shelf seas, estuaries, lagoons, salt marshes, athalassic freshwater and saline lakes, temporary ponds, streams, springs, groundwater, bromeliad water pouches, (semi-) terrestrial habitats such as damp mosses and leaf litter in tropical forests; some are parasitic or commensal on echinoderms, molluscs and even on gills of other crustaceans (Martens et al. 1998). All non-marine ostracods are in this group. Most Australian podocopid species are in the families Candonidae and Cyprididae.
Diagnosis
Calcified inner lamella broad or narrow. Antenna exopod greatly reduced, endopod with or without swimming setae. Maxillula with large branchial plate. First thoracopod with or without a branchial plate. Second thoracopod without branchial plate. Eighth thoracopod absent.
ID Keys
A key to suborders is presented in Cohen et. al. (2007).
Diagnosis References
Cohen, A.C., Peterson, D.E., & Maddocks, R.F. 2007. Ostracoda. pp. 417-446 in Carlton, J.T. The Light & Smith Manual: Intertidal Invertebrates from Central California to Oregon. Berkeley & Los Angeles : University of California Press 4
Horne, D.J., Cohen, A. & Martens, K. 2002. Taxonomy, morphology and biology of Quaternary and living Ostracoda. Geophysical Monograph 131: 5-36 [32]
General References
Martens, K., Horne, D.J. & Griffiths, H.I. 1998. Age and diversity of non-marine ostracods. pp. 37-55 in Martens, K. (ed.). Sex and Parthenogenesis: Evolutionary Ecology of Reproductive Modes in Non-marine Ostracods. Leiden, The Netherlands : Backhuys Publishers
Martens, K., Shon, I., Meisch, C. & Horne, D.J. 2008. Global diversity of ostracods (Ostracoda, Crustacea) in freshwater. Hydrobiologia 595: 185-193