page_title: Amphipoda
section_title: Ecology
hierarchical_section_title: Amphipoda / Ecology
caption_attribution_description: Talitrus saltator English: Sand hopper at the beach of the Baltic Sea at Bornholm island Polski: Zmieraczek plażowy
context_page_description: Amphipoda is an order of malacostracan crustaceans with no carapace and generally with laterally compressed bodies. Amphipods range in size from 1 to 340 millimetres and are mostly detritivores or scavengers. There are more than 9,900 amphipod species so far described. They are mostly marine animals, but are found in almost all aquatic environments. Some 1,900 species live in fresh water, and the order also includes terrestrial animals and sandhoppers such as Talitrus saltator.
context_section_description: Amphipods are found in almost all aquatic environments, from fresh water to water with twice the salinity of sea water and even in the Challenger Deep, the deepest known point in the ocean. They are almost always an important component of aquatic ecosystems, often acting as mesograzers. Most species in the suborder Gammaridea are epibenthic, although they are often collected in plankton samples. Members of the Hyperiidea are all planktonic and marine. Many are symbionts of gelatinous animals, including salps, medusae, siphonophores, colonial radiolarians and ctenophores, and most hyperiids are associated with gelatinous animals during some part of their life cycle. Some 1,900 species, or 20% of the total amphipod diversity, live in fresh water or other non-marine waters. Notably rich endemic amphipod faunas are found in the ancient Lake Baikal and waters of the Caspian Sea basin.
  The landhoppers of the family Talitridae (which also includes semi-terrestrial and marine animals) are terrestrial, living in damp environments such as leaf litter. Landhoppers have a wide distribution in areas that were formerly part of Gondwanaland, but have colonised parts of Europe and North America in recent times.
  Around 750 species in 160 genera and 30 families are troglobitic, and are found in almost all suitable habitats, but with their centres of diversity in the Mediterranean Basin, southeastern North America and the Caribbean.
  In populations found in Benthic ecosystems, amphipods play an essential role in controlling brown algae growth. The mesograzer behaviour of amphipods greatly contributes to the suppression of brown algal dominance in the absence of amphipod predators. Amphipods display a strong preference for brown algae in Benthic ecosystems, but due to removal of mesograzers by predators such as fish, brown algae is able to dominate these communities over green and red algae species.
caption: Talitrus saltator is an abundant animal of sandy beaches around Europe.
exif: {}