I like this crab’s style. It’s a porcelain crab, Neopetrolisthes maculatus. Porcelain crabs are decapod crustaceans in the family Porcellanidae, which resemble true crabs but are in fact closer related to squat lobsters. 🧵1/2
Meet Charlie. And meet his little buddy. Charlie talks about animals on his socials with a voice that’s pleasing and comforting. He learns you as well.
A Common shiny woodlouse (Oniscus asellus) on a bed of moss. They always seem like small sea-creatures that have strayed too far from the coast to find their way back. County Clare, Ireland.
Triops (three-eyed), tadpole shrimp are in the news because they were hatching at the flooded out burning man festival. They are freshwater #crustaceans, sometimes called dinosaur shrimp, because they have had this armored tadpole look since the Devonian 300M years ago. Triops spp. (order Notostraca), are #extremeophiles which can survive dried out to hatch and reproduce decades later from resistant diapause eggs in these ephemeral pools. https://www.iflscience.com/three-eyed-dinosaur-shrimp-are-waking-up-at-burning-man-70529
OK, back to my regularly scheduled programming (almost). I went for an afternoon walk along the Walker Preserve Trail and saw something a little unexpected: a crawfish! A quick look tells me this little guy is not native to these parts, but I'm sure they are happy to get some extra water in this typically dry part of the year.
These #shrimp -like #crustaceans occur around #Antarctica but are most highly concentrated in the #AntarcticPeninsula, which also happens to be one of the fast-warming places on the planet. That’s bad news for krill — and everything that depends on them — which is a lot.
Only a few inches long, Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) may be small, but their contributions to the #ecosystem are massive — much like the swarms themselves.
Bouy Barnacles (Dosima fascicularis). These open ocean crustaceans are capable of creating their own floats which they hang from as they float about on ocean currents. County Clare, Ireland.