Brine shrimp

Artemia is a genus of aquatic crustaceans also known as brine shrimp. It is the only genus in the family Artemiidae. The first historical record of the existence of Artemia dates back to the first half of the 10th century AD from Lake Urmia, Iran, with an example called by an Iranian geographer an "aquatic dog", although the first unambiguous record is the report and drawings made by Schlösser in 1757 of animals from Lymington, England. Artemia populations are found worldwide, typically in inland saltwater lakes, but occasionally in oceans. Artemia are able to avoid cohabiting with most types of predators, such as fish, by their ability to live in waters of very high salinity (up to 25%). The ability of the Artemia to produce dormant eggs, known as cysts, has led to extensive use of Artemia in aquaculture. The cysts may be stored indefinitely and hatched on demand to provide a convenient form of live feed for larval fish and crustaceans. Nauplii of the brine shrimp Artemia constitute the most widely used food item, and over of dry Artemia cysts are marketed worldwide annually. In addition, the resilience of Artemia makes them ideal animals running biological toxicity assays and it has become a model organism used to test the toxicity of chemicals. Breeds of Artemia are sold as novelty gifts under the marketing name Sea-Monkeys. The brine shrimp Artemia comprises a group of seven to nine species very likely to have diverged from an ancestral form living in the Mediterranean area about , around the time of the Messinian salinity crisis. The Laboratory of Aquaculture & Artemia Reference Center (ARC) at Ghent University possesses the largest known Artemia cyst collection, a cyst bank containing over 1,700 Artemia population samples collected from different locations around the world. Artemia is a typical primitive arthropod with a segmented body to which is attached broad leaf-like appendages. The body usually consists of 19 segments, the first 11 of which have pairs of appendages, the next two which are often fused together carry the reproductive organs, and the last segments lead to the tail.