The daggerblade grass shrimp, Palaemonetes pugio, is a small transparent to shrimp with a well-developed rostrum bearing several dorsal as well as three distinct ventral teeth, a smooth carapace and abdomen, and two pairs of chelate (claw-bearing) walking legs, the second pair more robust than the first. It has well-developed eyes with globular pigmented corneas and some slight yellow pigmentation in the eyestalks. The back is straight and the telson has two pairs of well-developed dorsal spines and also two pairs of posterior spines (Anderson 1985, Kaplan 1988, Rupert and Fox 1988).