[citation needed] Artemia salina is native to saline lakes, ponds, and temporary waters (not seas) in the Mediterranean region of Southern Europe, Anatolia, and Northern Africa.

Males differ from females by having their second antennae markedly enlarged, and modified into clasping organs used in mating.

Thick-shelled eggs are produced when the body of water is drying out, food is scarce, and the salt concentration is rising.

[9] At least some of the salt harvesters thought they helped clean the brine and would deliberately introduce them into the tanks.

Artemia is one of the standard organisms for testing the toxicity of chemicals[10] including screening for insecticidal activity – being used by Blizzard et al. 1989 to screen hundreds of semisynthetic avermectins, and by Conder et al. 1992 for the Streptomyces fumanus metabolite dioxapyrrolomycin.

Artemia occurs in vast numbers in the Great Salt Lake where it is commercially important.

This was based on a report by a German named Schlosser, who had found Artemia at Lymington, England.

[14] As presently defined, Artemia salina is restricted to the Mediterranean region of Southern Europe, Anatolia and Northern Africa.

[2][3] Some populations elsewhere have formerly been referred to as this species, but are now recognized as separate, including Artemia franciscana of the Americas.

[15][16] An alternative taxonomic treatment is to recognize the extirpated English population as a species of its own, to which the name Artemia salina should be restricted.

[18] Some have considered the North African population distinct and proposed that the name Artemia tunisiana should be restricted to it,[19] but this is contradicted by genetic evidence, which shows that South European and North African populations belong to the same species.