Aquatic creatures like lobsters and crabs depend on smell to find food, a suitable mate or to avoid predators, but how do they pluck these odors from the water swirling around them?
Using a combination of field samples from the Norwegian Sea and a new method for analyzing sea life populations, researchers have shown that tiny marine crustaceans called copepods use cannibalism as a mechanism to limit their population.
A tiny fossilised relative of modern-day lobsters is forcing a rethink of beliefs about the emergence of complex organisms. The 511-million-year old fossil is less than half a millimetre long and the oldest complete example of a crustacean, the group that includes lobsters, crabs and prawns. It resembles the juvenile form of today’s barnacles.
