Resources on Broad-Level Crustacean ID

[okbirdman]

For a current project, I am attempting to identify benthic invertebrates and zooplankton (freshwater, brackish, and marine) in the South Pacific. For my particular location, there are fairly comprehensive species lists, some of which include photos, but the dichotomous keys that I have been able to find are fairly limited. Because of this, I am looking for resources that provide characters that aid in broad-level (ideally to family/genus) identification of invertebrates, especially for Brachyura, Anomura, Caridea, and Stomatopoda. I am looking for both global/regional treatments of family-level ID/characteristics for these taxa and any suggestions for more taxon-specific dichotomous keys from the Indo-Pacific region.

Many thanks, and feel free to expand the conversation to other regions or more general resources

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Here are some of the resources I have been able to find so far:

• A Guide to Marine Coastal Plankton and Marine Invertebrate Larvae, 2nd Ed. Smith & Johnson, 1997 (The link only includes the Quick Flip Reference section, I am searching for full-text online access)
• Crustacea.net IntKey (program seems to be currently defunct, trying to communicate with founders to see if there is another way to access this information)
• Cook Islands Biodiversity Database
• Central Pacific Crustacea (great regional lists, but no keys available)
• Checklist of the Terrestrial and Freshwater Arthropods of French Polynesia
• An Annotated and Illustrated Catalogue of Marine Lobsters Known to Date
• Amphipoda from the South Pacific: The Society Islands

[langzi]

The South Pacific Community has a few guides for your area:
For example:

A guide to the decapod crustaceans of the South Pacific

Identification cards for marine invertebrate surveys in the Pacific Islands

[thebeachcomber]

If you’re willing to wait until January next year, and can afford the price, this forthcoming book looks like it will be an incredible seminal work in this field: https://www.publish.csiro.au/book/7895/

I’ve met both authors (and indeed Shane Ahyong was my co-supervisor for my honours thesis), and both are top authorities in the field

[okbirdman]

Thanks to both @langzi and @thebeachcomber for the information on these resources, I think they will all be very helpful! Unfortunately, the guide by Poore & Ahyong will not be out during the timeframe of this project, but I am definitely going to look into it after it comes out! Do you think the authors would be open to sharing any info if I reached out to them by email?

[thebeachcomber]

worth trying!