Morphological aspects of subitaneous and resting eggs from Acartia josephinae (Calanoida)

A. josephinae collected along the Salento Peninsula (Ionian and Adriatic Seas) laid two types of eggs, under laboratory conditions, and they are described for the first time. Under a light microscope subitaneous eggs looked smooth on the surface, but scanning electron microscopy revealed that the surface was not perfectly smooth but tubercular with many small protuberances. Resting eggs had long and thick spines whose apical part was multi-branched. The use of egg morphology as a taxonomic character, in the systematic of copepods, is proposed.