Cladocerans!

We had an exciting day with Jonathan’s discovery of cladocerans in our samples taken from the Banana River near the Pineda Causeway back in November. These small crustaceans are known as water fleas and females will brood their babies in a pouch before they hatch. There’s no larval planktonic form and what you’re looking at are the adults. After years of studying zooplankton in the Indian River and the Halifax, I have never observed one and these particular samples have tons!