Branchinecta sandiegonensis

The animal

B. Sandiegonensis ranges 8–16 millimeters in length. For males it can be distinguished by the length of the second antennae and for females by the appearance of the brood pouch.

Range and habitat

B. Sandiegonensis occurs along the coast of Southern California and northwestern Baja California, with its distribution centered in San Diego County, California. Called the San Diego fairy shrimp, it is named after the vernal pools found in San Diego County, California, where this species was originally discovered.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Breeding

B. Sandiegonensis appear during the rainy season from January to March, where vernal pools become filled with water and egg hatching begins.

In crisis

Fish and Wildlife Service as an endangered species in 1997. B. Sandiegonensis has also been the subject of several studies on population genetics in an effort to better understand the fairy shrimp itself and the effects of habitat loss. Using eDNA testing, UCLA researchers have established a method to identify B. Sandiegonensis from water samples without needing to directly sample individual fairy shrimp.

Branchinecta sandiegonensis is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Branchinecta sandiegonensis, Wikidata item Q4020306. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.