Mediterranean and Black Sea Monstrilloid Copepods (Copepoda: Monstrilloida): Rediscovering the Diversity of Transient Zooplankters
Journal: Water
Year: 2021

Monstrilloids are copepods that live freely in plankton without feeding but have parasitic immature stages that develop within infected benthic molluscs and polychaetes. Because of their incompletely known life cycles and the difficulty of matching conspecific males and females, it has been difficult to assess their true diversity anywhere on earth. The monstrilloid fauna of the Mediterranean and Black seas (MBS) has been investigated for over 140 years, during which time four phases of study ca