Talk:Ostracod

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"Ostracod" seems to be much more common (at least going by Google) than the "common" name "seed shrimp", so I think "ostracod" is the right name for the article. Stan 04:05, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Not arguing but the"water watch" organisation in Victoria Australia calls them seed shrimp.--220.253.7.172 (talk) 05:19, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Confusing sentence-paragraph

The current article has the following "sentence" paragraph:

Ostracods have been particularly useful for the biozonation of marine strata on a local or regional scale, and they are invaluable indicators of paleo-environments because of their widespread occurrence, small size, easily-preservable generally-moulted calcified bivalve carapaces, the valves are a commonly found microfossil.

First of all, that's at least two sentences, as it has two distinct noun-verb combinations with no connecting conjunctions. But the absurdly complex, unpunctuated adjective pile-up before "carapaces" makes it hard for me to figure out if it can simply be made two sentences by breaking it after that word, or if there is some larger editing error that confusingly jammed together too much information, since I don't know anything about this creature. Could a domain-knowledgeable editor clean up this paragraph? Meanwhile, I ask editors to remember that punctuation and conjunctions are vital to separating complex information into digestible pieces, especially for general-purpose encyclopedias like Wikipedia. Thanks. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:48, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Number of species

Does anyone know how many species of ostracods really are there? The article says that 13 000 extant species are known, while the Encarta 2005 DVD says that only about 2000 species are known. Do they get discovered so quickly, or what?--Crustaceanguy (talk) 12:35, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

According to a book called 'Aquatic Biodiversity II' by Segers and Martins 2005 ([1]), Kempf ([2]) has described 30,000 species but Segers and Martin suggest that this includes some fossil forms and that synonomies are not taken into account reducing the freshwater species to a mere 3000 from 8000 suggesting overall that there would be ca. 12,000, matching the number in the article pretty well. Mikenorton (talk) 13:18, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I see, but the Encarta article on ostracods (found here) clearly takes both marine and freshwater species into account. --Crustaceanguy (talk) 00:32, 11 February 2008 (UTC)