roachhouse

their binomial name roughly translates to Bizarre Bunnytail. (if only myriapods could afford cutesy common names maybe people would like them more!)

within the class Diplopoda (millipedes), polyxenidans are only distantly related to the roundbacked and flatback types that are more familiar.

accordingly their anatomy is pretty distinct at a glance—in addition to having relatively few segments, polyxenidans lack a hard exoskeleton and have no poison glands for defense. instead, the hair in their little cottontails has microscopic hooks that lock onto multiple setae hairs of an ant or other predator, Velcro-ing them sometimes to the point of immobility!

they’re also remarkably perceptive and hard to sneak up on! I spent a few minutes chasing them across a couple inches of slate while they hauled their fluffy tails away from me.

some cool figures of Polyxenus bristles—nasty, potentially deadly barbed wire if you’re the size of an ant. polyxenidans regrow their hair with every molt, so can fend off multiple ant attacks in their lifetime… unless it’s a particular type of ant.

as always in the arthropod world, there’s usually someone to eat even the best-defended little guys, and polyxenidans are no exception. enter Thaumatomyrmex, certainly one of the freakiest looking ants around.

they specialize in eating polyxenidans, and those pitchfork mandibles help strip the hair off the millipede and avoid getting porcupine-slapped while stinging prey to death. aren’t bugs great?

But what’s really funny is that if xenomorphs were like trematodes, the queen and soldier castes would *not* be the final stage.

This is the most complex possible trematode lifecycle. In the trematodes that have castes, soldiers and queens are both the “redia I” stage. If the xenomorphs were like trematodes, they would have at least one, maybe two life stages left before they made a cocoon (metacercarium) and then became adults.

Sources:

https://parasiteecology.wordpress.com/2017/03/01/soldier-trematodes/

3/12/23

But last time I reblogged one ten/fifteen minutes later I got a call offering me a job

But I reblogged it because I was waiting on hearing back from the job. So there you go.

Pure

Joy

sobbing at these stalk-eyed fly images from an entomology today article

tiger beetle larva shenanigans

(probably Cicindela repanda- Massachusetts, 6/24/22)

these guys are pretty unusual among beetle grubs in that they hunt visually, watching for movement with four beady eyes before bursting out of their burrow to grab passing prey. They can’t seem to tell the difference between a bug and a blade of grass though.