| Summary: | This thesis is focused on symbiotic associations of caridean shrimps with a variety of marine animals of different phyla. Currently, five caridean families comprise symbiotic species. Palaemonidae (including the traditionally recognised subfamily Pontoniinae of predominantly symbiotic species) is the most species-rich and ecologically important of them. Its representatives live from temperate to tropical marine or brackish waters, with the highest diversity in the Indo-West Pacific biogeographic area and the western Atlantic. The thesis is composed of two parts, one focusing on ecology and evolutionary biology, the other on systematics. The first part consists of three studies providing new knowledge on the evolution of symbioses in palaemonid shrimps. We confirmed that inter-phylum host-switching events and colonization of new hosts likely played a major role in the evolution of palaemonid symbiotic shrimps and these evolved multiple times (Chapter 1). Similarly, the switching from ecto- to endosymbiotic mode, associated with new body forms and ecological adaptations, occurred several times in palaemonid evolution. Reversal back to a free-living mode is rare, occasionally observed among ectosymbiotic lineages. Our results also confirm the necessity of systematic revision of this group,...
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