Brine Shrimp

• When conditions worsen it produces diapause cysts that withstand complete desiccation, vacuum and extreme temperatures for years, and hatch as soon as they are placed in salt water.
• Those cysts are sold in sachets and are the basis of Sea-Monkeys, as well as the most widely used live food in the rearing of fish and crustacean larvae.
• Its pink colour comes from the carotenoids of the microalgae it filters, the same pigments that colour the flamingos that feed on it.
• It lives where nothing else can. Its advantage is not competing but tolerating salinities lethal to its predators, which is why it builds up enormous populations in salt pans.
• Its eggs, called cysts, enter diapause and survive for years completely dry. Simply dropping them into salt water hatches them, which has made them the standard live food of aquaculture and of aquariums worldwide.
• That same ability made it famous as a toy: the Sea-Monkeys sold by mail order in the 1960s are brine shrimp.
• It is used as a test organism in ecotoxicology for its ease of culture and its sensitivity to toxins.
• It can reproduce by parthenogenesis, and many populations are entirely female.
• Its pink colour comes from the carotenoids in the microalgae it eats, the same ones that colour the flamingos that feed on it.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (crustacean)

Habitat and environment

Salt pans, hypersaline lagoons and salt lakes

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (es): Artemia salina · ScienceDirect (Hughes 1989) · Science Advances, How colonial animals evolve · Wikipedia, Zooid · Rangos de talla de adulto de Artemia salina (8-10 mm, hasta 15 mm) en literatura de acuicultura y de alimento vivo