#eubranchipus

[herpsandbirds]

Vernal Fairy Shrimp (Eubranchipus vernalis), family Chirocephalidae, order Anostraca, NE US

note the egg sacs, full of eggs.

photographs by Twan Leenders

[platycryptus]

these are vernal pool fairy shrimp (Eubranchipus sp.) swimming among the ghostly gelatinous egg masses of spotted salamanders.

Ancient filter-feeding crustaceans related to brine shrimp, this species is only active in the cold water during late winter and early spring, dying out sometime around May. They lay eggs that survive their temporary ponds drying out and hatch the following winter- but sometimes they don’t hatch and fairy shrimp will be absent from a given pond for several years only to reappear later.

[humanbyweight]

I found fairy shrimp!

[dendroica]

If you live in a place as transient as a vernal pool, here now but gone in a few months, an environment of unpredictable duration and often uncertain arrival, you better have a solid survival strategy to build your life around. First, once the right environment appears, you must develop very quickly and reach reproductive maturity before the changing conditions kill you. Second, you need a method to keep your genetic line alive, even when the only habitat in which you can survive is gone. And third, plan for the unforeseeable cataclysms, such as sudden evaporation of the pool before you are ready to produce a new generation. Because, if you fail on any of these accounts, your species will not last past the first generation. Fairy shrimp, despite their unassuming physique, are master survivalists in the most hostile and unstable of habitats, and execute the three-step action plan flawlessly.

Read more about fairy shrimp (Eubranchipus vernalis) and how they survive via Tough as nails at The Smaller Majority by Piotr Naskrecki