Platorchestia platensis
species of crustacean
Platorchestia platensis is a species of sand flea, an amphipod crustacean that lives on beaches.
Ecology
In common with other sand fleas of the family Talitridae, P. platensis lives above the littoral zone in moist sand or rotting seaweed. There appears to be competitive exclusion between P. platensis and the native Orchestia gammarellus on European beaches.
Distribution
The native range of P. platensis is not known in detail, but it is probably circumtropical. The species description was based on specimens collected near the commercial port of Montevideo, and the species probably spreads through ship's ballast. It was first discovered in northern Europe in 1860 on a beach near Humlebæk, Denmark. By the 1940s, it was common on both sides of the Kattegat; it reached the Netherlands around 1950, and the United Kingdom in 1978.
Taxonomy
Platorchestia platensis was originally described as Orchestia platensis by Henrik Nikolai Krøyer in 1845, based on type material from the Río de la Plata in Uruguay.
“Platorchestia platensis” enters the record as species of crustacean. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Platorchestia, platensis and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 18, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q3355243. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1860, 1950, 1978 and 1845.
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This entry incorporates text from “Platorchestia platensis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.