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#invertebrates

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Day 9 of the 2024 #dragonfly #AdventCalendar. Scarce Emerald Damselfly is restricted to the east here but commoner on the continent. It looks like the Common Emerald but is chunkier and has brighter blue eyes. This one in #CanveyIsland in July. The manky ditch I was searching when I found this will feature in this calendar a couple more times as it's a very good spot despite not being in a nature reserve. #DragonflyAdventCalendar #Essex #invertebrates #ukwildlife #photography

A throwback for Ctenophore Day! If you ever wondered how to pronounce Ctenophore, today is October 4, the 10th month, fourth day and it sounds like ten oh four.

They are a phylum of marine invertebrates, like this comb jelly which look a bit like jellyfish, but instead of stinging tentacles they have comb-like cilia (hairs). 🧵1/2

For the prompt claws: A porcelain crab! Looks like a crab, has crab in its name…is it a crab? Nope. False crab. Porcelain crabs, Neopetrolisthes maculatus are decapod crustaceans in the family Porcellanidae, which resemble true crabs but are in fact closer related to squat lobsters. They have flattened bodies as an adaptation for living in rock crevices. 🧵1/2

This week is about troglofauna: the cave dwellers. I’m veering from the suggested species to illustrate some I travelled to see, in the glowworm cave of Waitomo. I love and being a bit claustrophobic I was proud that I ventured into caves, even where it was a squeeze.

On the North Island of New Zealand (that is, Aotearoa) there are caves near Waitomo with large populations of Arachnocampa luminosa, a 🧵1/n

The 2nd week of subterranean month is about how some that live underground lose traits like vision. This is a of the Paroster macrosturtensis beetle, a blind predatory subterranean diving water beetle from the calcrete aquifers of the Western Australian desert. Trapped underground for million of years as the calcrete caves formed these beetles have evolved to no longer have eyes.

minouette.etsy.com/listing/175

Making some new antipodean invertebrates for July, the subterranean month for

You may not know the velvet worms if you live outside the tropics and in the northern hemisphere. There are 2 families of them: one in the tropics and the other, like my Lino block depicts, from the southern hemisphere (and countries once part of Gondwana). 🧵1/n

I made a pattern of my linocut porcelain crab for ! Porcelain crabs, Neopetrolisthes maculatus are decapod crustaceans in the family Porcellanidae, which resemble true crabs but are in fact closer related to squat lobsters. These are 1 of at least 5 groups of decapod crustaceans which have evolved to be more crab-shaped in a process known as carsinisation. Find this on Spoonflower minouette shop