What is an arthropod?

You live with them almost everyday, even in the very cold winter months! They are everywhere
and are the largest animal phylum -- about 85% of all known animals in the world are part of this
class.

There are far more species of arthropods than there are species in all the other phylums(phyla)
combined.

Mosquito
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Grasshopper
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They are spiders, insects, centipedes, mites, ticks, lobsters, crabs, shrimp, crayfish, krill,
barnacles, scorpions and many, many others.
Can you see two segments?
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Can you see three segments?

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The easiest way to tell an arthropod from any other animal is to see if they have:

1) A segmented body.
This means that they will have a body made up of more than one part. Spiders have two
segments and flies have three segments.

centipede

2) Many jointed legs or limbs.

Spiders have 8 legs, millipedes can have... Hundreds!
Crab
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3) An exoskeleton.
This is an external skeleton. Like armor, it protects the arthropods body. When arthropods are
born the exoskeleton is soft but hardens quickly and it can be shed as the creature
grows. Arthropods are invertebrates; which means that they do not have a backbone.

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4) Cold blooded
Arthropods are cold blooded -- which means, their body temperature depends on the temperature
of the environment surrounding them.
Photo Source: Corel Web Gallery

Arthropods are some of the most interesting animals in the world!

They fly, they creep, and they crawl. They live on land, in ponds and in the ocean. From ants to
bumblebees, crabs to crayfish, spiders to centipedes -- which are your favorites!?

Scientific stuff: Arthropods include eleven animal classes

 Subphylum Chelicerata
o Class Merostomata (horseshoe crabs, eurypterids)
o Class Pycnogonida (sea spiders)
o Class Arachnida (spiders, ticks, mites)

 Subphylum Crustacea
o Class Remipedia
o Class Cephalocarida
o Class Branchiopoda (fairy shrimp, water fleas)
o Class Maxillopoda (ostracods, copepods, barnacles)
o Class Malacostraca (isopods, amphipods, krill, crabs, shrimp)

 Subphylum Uniramia
o Class Chilopoda (centipedes)
o Class Diplopoda (millipedes)
o Class Insecta (all of the insects including ants, bees, beetles and butterflies)

[2]
The annelids (also called "ringed worms"), formally called Annelida (from Latin anellus "little ring" ), are a large phylum of
[3]
segmentedworms, with over 17,000 modern species including ragworms, earthworms and leeches. Various forms specialise in their
respective ecologies; some in marine environments as distinct as tidal zones and hydrothermal vents, others in fresh water, and yet others in
moist terrestrial environments.

Phylum Arthropoda (arthro = joint; poda = foot) is the most numerous phylum of all living organisms,
both in number of species and in number of individuals. One, very conservative, estimate is that there
are well over one million species of insects alone. In terms of number of individuals, there are more ants
than anything else, and in terms of numbers of species, there are more kinds of beetles than anything
else: 40 to 50% of all insect species are beetles. There are more species of insects than all other plants
and animals together. An arthropod has a segmented body covered by an exoskeleton made from chitin
and other chemicals. This exoskeleton serves as protection and provides places for muscle attachment.
Arthropods must molt because their exoskeletons don’t grow with them. Arthropods have open
circulatory systems consisting of a dorsal heart which collects blood from the body cavity and pumps it
back into the body cavity again. In insects, the anterior portion of the heart (which is located in the
abdomen) is extended into a tube that is called an aorta which directs the blood forward as it goes out
into the body cavity. Arthropods have a well-developed, mesodermal, ventral, solid nerve cord and well-
developed sense organs. The body feature from which the phylum takes its name is the jointed
appendages, which include antennae and mouthparts as well as walking legs.