Green Atya from the Philippines (now with pix!)

[Chaca]

All the pics of the Philippine atyoid look like females. Do all your individuals really have that deep bodied pregnant appearance to them?

If I'm not mistaken, both pix are of the same specimen. I'll try to post some more pix for you soon.

Very bold shrimp. They congregate in the open all the time, looking like trucks parked in a lot. They also seem to have huge appetites, sifting and munching constantly. Unlike the pearl shrimp, which ignore their molted exoskeletons, the atyoids relish the molts, and have cleaned up about a dozen pearl shrimp molts. Two of the atyoids have already molted.

The colors vary quite a bit. Some are greenish, some are bluish, some grey, and one is bright orange! I suspect the orange one is one of the shrimp that just molted.

[Chaca]

Here are some more pix...



And here's a red one.

[chlorophyll]

oooo ahhh
I'm not sure I would personally call them beautiful, but they are neat looking. No rostrum and their bent down antennae give them squid faces.
Yeah and those first three or so abdominal segments do seem to make them all look female or even pregnant.

If the atyoids are such heavy feeders, that might explain why the Hawaiian ones haven't been able to tolerate streams where N.d. sinensis have come to live. I tended to think there could easily be enough crud in the streams for everyone to eat (especially small shrimps), but I guess that's naive and not exactly ecologically sound thinking!