Shrimp And Prawns

This group gathers Crustaceans subcategory members belonging to the shrimp and prawns, small to medium-sized, mostly swimming decapod crustaceans with a laterally flattened body, long antennae and a tail fan used for a quick backward escape response much like their larger lobster relatives. It spans familiar edible species harvested by commercial fisheries and aquaculture worldwide, cleaner shrimp that remove parasites from the skin of larger reef fish in a well-studied mutually beneficial relationship, the pistol shrimp, capable of snapping a specialized claw fast enough to produce a shockwave that stuns or kills small prey, and the northern krill, gathered here as the closest common-shape fit even though krill belong to their own separate order, Euphausiacea, rather than true shrimp. Nearly every member here is a critical link in marine and freshwater food webs, both as a predator of even smaller organisms and as prey for fish, birds and marine mammals higher up the chain.