Asellota

{{Short description|Suborder of crustaceans}}

{{Automatic_taxobox | name = Asellota

| image = Asellus aquaticus.jpg

| image_caption = Asellus aquaticus, Asellidae

| taxon = Asellota

| authority = Latreille, 1802 {{ITIS |id=92650 |taxon=Asellota}}

| subdivision_ranks = Superfamilies

| subdivision = Aselloidea

Stenetrioidea

Janiroidea

Gnathostenetroidoidea

}}{{Portal|Crustaceans}}

Asellota is a suborder of isopod crustaceans found in marine and freshwater environments.{{cite web |url=http://www.crustacea.net/crustace/www/asellota.htm |publisher=Crustacea.net |title=Asellota |author=J. K. Lowry |date=October 2, 1999 |work=Crustacea, the Higher Taxa |access-date=January 29, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090120094611/http://crustacea.net/crustace/www/asellota.htm |archive-date=January 20, 2009 |url-status=dead }} Roughly one-quarter of all marine isopods belong to this suborder.{{cite web |work=Guide to the Coastal Marine Isopods of California |author=Richard Brusca, Vania R. Coelho and Stefano Taiti |title=Suborder Asellota |accessdate=January 28, 2009 |url=http://tolweb.org/notes/?note_id=4173}} Members of this suborder are readily distinguished from other isopods by their complex copulatory apparatus. Other characteristics include six-jointed antennal peduncle, the styliform uropods (a character shared with some other isopod groups), the fusion of pleonites 5, 4 and sometimes 3 to the pleotelson, and absence of the first pleopod in females.{{cite web|url=http://www.personal.usyd.edu.au/~buz/Asellota/asell-def.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050623062934/http://www.personal.usyd.edu.au/~buz/Asellota/asell-def.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=June 23, 2005 |title=Definition of the Asellota |author=George D. F. (Buz) Wilson |publisher=University of Sydney |accessdate=January 28, 2009 }}