Pagurapseudidae [SEP] parent taxon
Pagurapseudidae
Pagurapseudidae is a family of crustaceans in the order Tanaidacea. Like hermit crabs, they inhabit empty gastropod shells, but can be told apart from hermit crabs by the lack of a carapace, revealing the segmentation of the thorax, and by the greater number of legs: hermit crabs have five pairs of legs, of which the first has large claws, and the last is highly reduced, while in Pagurapseudidae, there is one pair of claws, plus six further walking legs.
The family Pagurapseudidae contains the following
Taxon in disguise
In bacteriology, a taxon in disguise is a species, genus or higher unit of biological classification whose evolutionary history reveals has evolved from another unit of similar or lower rank, making the parent unit paraphyletic. This happens when rapid evolution makes a new species appear radically different from the ancestral group, so that it is not (initially) recognised as belonging to the parent phylogenetic group, leaving the latter an evolutionary grade.
While the term is from bacteriology, parallel examples are found throughout the tree of