With the crowd of her siblings, the Zoea hits the surface of the sea. Again and again, her skin splits, and a completely different Zoea appears. The maggot is the larva of the fly and the zoea is the larva of the crab. 1. Larval form of crabs and other decapods, characterized by one or more spines on the carapace and rudimentary limbs on the abdomen and thorax. You ask the question of skipping the Zoea stage in freshwater decapods: is this an illustration of acceleration? 2. A freely swimming planktonic larval form of many decapods, and especially crabs, which has a relatively large cephalothorax, visible eyes, antennae and fringed mouthparts. To illustrate this metamorphosis, we give figures of Zoea Taurus in two states, namely Fig.