Urothoe
genus of crustaceans
Urothoe is a genus of very small marine amphipod crustaceans in the family Urothoidae. Members of the genus are found worldwide.
Biology
Urothods are 5–8 millimetres (0.2–0.3 in) long and live on the sea bed or in shallow burrows in gravelly substrates or muddy sand. They can swim for short distances. They are vulnerable to dredging but are able to recover afterwards and re-establish their burrows. They are deposit feeders and also selectively scrape microorganisms from grains of sand.
Reproduction
Urothoe reaches sexual maturity at five months and may live for about a year. The sexes are distinct and breeding takes place in the summer months. Fertilisation is internal and there are about fifteen eggs per brood, produced in a cycle of about fifteen days. Fecundity is high and the juveniles grow fast but biological dispersal is very limited.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Urothoe” as genus of crustaceans. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as genus of crustaceans. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
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 May 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3934377. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Urothoe” 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.