Word Finder - pleopods

definition

One of the abdominal legs of a crustacean.

example

In decapods such as lobsters, pleopods are legs mainly used for swimming but sometimes used for brooding eggs or catching food. In some species certain pleopods of an animal may have been adapted to special functions such as reproduction.

The abdomen or pleon carries the remaining six pairs, of which from three to five are called pleopods and the remainder uropods.

The second maxillipeds are developed into powerful prehensile organs, and the branchiae, instead of being connected with the appendages of head and trunk, are developed on the pleopods, appendages of the abdomen.

The slender pleon has always six distinct segments, the sixth carrying two-branched uropods, the preceding five armed with no pleopods in the female, whereas in the male the number of pairs varies from five to none.

The genuine Isopoda are divided among the Flabellifera, in which the terminal segment and uropods form a flabellum or swimming fan; the Epicaridea, parasitic on Crustaceans; the Valvifera, in which the uropods fold valve-like over the branchial pleopods; the Asellota, in which the first pair of pleopods of the female are usually transformed into a single opercular plate; the Phreatoicidea, a fresh-water tribe, known as yet only from subterranean waters in New Zealand and an Australian swamp nearly 6000 ft.

Edwards (1879), which is unique in having supplementary ramified branchiae developed at the bases of the pleopods.