Classification of the Recent Crustacea

"This volume is an attempt to provide the reader, whether a seasoned systematist or a beginning student, with a glimpse into the enormous variety of extant crustaceans. The sheer number of categories that humans have constructed to contain and order this group is some indication of the incredible amount of morphological diversity they exhibit. But this is only a small part of the overall picture. Even if one were to grasp the full range of taxonomic diversity as presented in this classification, such knowledge would shed no light on the actual biology of these fascinating animals: their behavior, feeding, locomotion, reproduction; their relationships to other organisms; their adaptations to the environment; and other facets of their existence that fall under the heading of biodiversity. By producing this volume we are attempting to update an existing classification, produced by Tom Bowman and Larry Abele (1982), in order to arrange and update the Crustacea collection of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. This enormous and diverse collection contains an estimated four to five million specimens, making it the second largest collection of Crustacea in the Americas. While undertaking this task, it occurred to us that others might benefit from our efforts, and that perhaps a general update on the number and arrangement of the living crustacean families, along with an explanation of the systematic and classificatory changes suggested during the last two decades, might be a welcome addition to the literature."