The molts from these are common along the edges of the vernal pool
vernal pool restoration site
Muskrat at Discovery pond; one water boatman and a couple of damselfly or mayfly larvae and a few fairy shrimp. Not much else in the pond.
At pond: fairy shrimp
Love the vernal pool fauna! This one was in a pothole under Shrimp Rock on the Slickrock Trail. It's getting really cold at night--these guys better grow fast...
Forked tail, so I guess it's Triops rather than Lepidurus. T. longicaudatus is the most common species in the area, so I assume that's it.
Thoughts?
in 2010 we had enough rain to fill the ephemeral pond
I'm not sure if these are freshwater shrimp, or another species with "shrimp" in its common name.
Tadpole shrimp. Only two genera in this order (Triops & Lepidurus), but no idea how to distinguish them.
This group is considered a living fossil and have not changed much since the Triassic.
I only saw them this one wet season, so I'm guessing that they don't hatch every year. Their eggs in the sediment must be very resilient to survive the hot Kalahari summers.
Members of the order Notostraca (colloquially referred to as notostracans, tadpole shrimp, shield shrimp or by the genus name Triops) are small crustaceans in the class Branchiopoda. Triops have two internal compound eyes and one naupliar eye in between, a flattened carapace covering its head and leg-bearing segments of the body. The order contains a single family, with only two extant genera. Their external morphology has apparently not changed since the Triassic appearance of Triops cancriformis...
