Crustaceans (Crustacea) are a very large group of arthropods, comprising almost 52,000 described species , and are usually treated as a subphylum . They include various familiar animals, such as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill and barnacles. The majority of them are aquatic, living in either marine or fresh water environments, but a few groups have adapted to life on land, such as terrestrial crabs, terrestrial hermit crabs and woodlice.

Crustaceans are among the most successful animals, and are as abundant in the oceans as insects are on land. Over half of animals in the world are marine copepod crustaceans. The majority of crustaceans are also motile, moving about independently, although a few taxonomic units are parasitic and live attached to their hosts (including sea lice, fish lice, whale lice, tongue worms, and Cymothoa exigua, all of which may be referred to as "crustacean lice"), and adult barnacles live a sessile life—they are attached headfirst to the substrate and cannot move independently.

Although most crustaceans are small, their morphology varies greatly and they include such large animals as lobsters 70 cm long and spider crabs with a leg span of nearly 4 m . The scientific study of these crustaceans is known as carcinology. Other names for carcinology are malacostracology, crustaceology and crustalogy, and a scientist who works in carcinology is a carcinologist, crustaceologist or crustalogist.

As arthropods, crustaceans have a very stiff exoskeleton, which must be shed to allow the animal to grow (ecdysis or molting). Various parts of the exoskeleton may be fused together; this is particularly noticeable in the carapace, the thick dorsal shield seen on many crustaceans that often forms a protective chamber for the gills. Crustacean appendages are typically biramous, meaning they are divided into two parts; this includes the second pair of antennae, but not the first, which is uniramous.

There is some doubt whether this is a derived state, as had been traditionally assumed, or whether it may be a primitive state, with the branching of the limbs being lost in all extant arthropod groups except the crustaceans. One piece of evidence supporting the latter view is the biramous nature of trilobite limbs .

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