Bentheuphausia amblyops, the deep sea krill is a species of krill

Krill

Krill is the common name given to the order Euphausiacea of shrimp-like marine crustaceans. Also known as euphausiids, these small invertebrates are found in all oceans of the world...

, small shrimp

Shrimp

Shrimp are swimming, decapod crustaceans classified in the infraorder Caridea, found widely around the world in both fresh and salt water. Adult shrimp are filter feeding benthic animals living close to the bottom. They can live in schools and can swim rapidly backwards. Shrimp are an important...

-like crustacean

Crustacean

Crustaceans form a very large group of arthropods, usually treated as a subphylum, which includes such familiar animals as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill and barnacles. The 50,000 described species range in size from Stygotantulus stocki at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span...

s living in the ocean. B. amblyops is the only species within its genus, which in turn is the only genus within the family Bentheuphausiidae. All the 85 other species of krill known are classified in the family Euphausiidae.

Distribution

B. amblyops occurs in the northern Atlantic Ocean

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...

 in latitude

Latitude

In geography, the latitude of a location on the Earth is the angular distance of that location south or north of the Equator. The latitude is an angle, and is usually measured in degrees . The equator has a latitude of 0°, the North pole has a latitude of 90° north , and the South pole has a...

s south of 40° N

40th parallel north

The 40th parallel north is a circle of latitude that is 40 degrees north of the Earth's equatorial plane. It crosses Europe, the Mediterranean Sea, Asia, the Pacific Ocean, North America, and the Atlantic Ocean....

, and also in the southern seas of the Atlantic, in the Indian Ocean

Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...

 and in the Pacific

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

. It is a bathypelagic krill that lives in deep waters below 1000 metres (3,280.8 ft).

Description

It is distinguished from the Euphausiidae by several morphological features, the most apparent being that they are not bioluminescent

Bioluminescence

Bioluminescence is the production and emission of light by a living organism. Its name is a hybrid word, originating from the Greek bios for "living" and the Latin lumen "light". Bioluminescence is a naturally occurring form of chemiluminescence where energy is released by a chemical reaction in...

 and that their first pair of pleopods is not modified as copulatory tool organs. Also, their eyes are smaller than those of the Euphausiidae. Adults reach a length of 4 to 5 cm (1.6 to 2 ).

External links

• http://www.marine.csiro.au/cgi-bin/cs_map.pl?csq=7000:459:2|7101:209:2|7101:209:4|7101:219:2|7102:100:1|7102:100:3|7301:394:2|7301:394:4|7301:495:1|7301:495:3|7302:215:1|7303:122:3|7303:353:1|7306:113:4|7401:104:4|7401:134:3|7401:353:4|7401:354:3|7401:479:1|7401:479:2|7513:236:3&title=OBIS%20stored%20distribution%20-%20%3Ci%3EBentheuphausia%20amblyops%3C/i%3E Distribution data set of Bentheuphausia ambylops] from OBIS.