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Obscure Taxa; For interesting or obscure organisms you'd like to share.
Topic Started: Dec 14 2016, 09:46 PM (48,948 Views)
Even
Roman Catholic theistic evolutionist
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Is Fistularia somehow within Syngnathiformes or is that a ridiculous convergence?
Post-quick-search edit: whoa, those are some huge pipefishes...

As for my first contribution here...
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Enneacampus ansorgii aka the African freshwater pipefish. One of the little number of pipefish species which can be properly kept in an aquarium. Weirdness factor for how pretty it is (Ain't that a different colour scheme?) + how interesting it is that these guys must've been adapted to freshwater for some millions of years
Edited by Even, Apr 7 2017, 10:47 AM.
Currently a part of Specworld's revival and The Dark Phoenix's Dinosaur Spec... Still open for idea exchanges and commentaries

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generation. Social experiment.

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DINOCARID
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Cornetfish are indeed giant syngnathiformes, which should also be used more in spec.
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HangingThief
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FTR I've had the thought of a project where all the fish are tetraodontoformes cross my mind more than once. Tetraodontoformes are cool!
Hey.


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Vorsa
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Mysterious tundra-dwelling humanoid
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Cepahlotes

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Known as turtle ants, these ants are particularly weird due to their unusual soldier caste. Numerous species have a soldier caste with large heads that match the size and shape of their nest entrances. These soldiers serve as living doors that open to admit incoming foragers and effectively exclude potential intruders.

[1]
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Worker castes typically include two forms, a worker and soldier, but there are a few species that are monomorphic. The larger soldier caste typically has an enlarged head disk. In some species the head of the soldier is very different from the worker while in others these differences are less pronounced. Queens and soldiers tend to share similar head morphology. Soldiers use their heads to plug the nest entrance. This can be very effective in excluding potential intruders. Other morphological differences between the worker castes are present but these differences have not been studied as well as head morphology.


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Native to tropical regions, there are 119 known extant species and 16 fossil species. These ants can also 'glide', parachuting between trees to avoid landing on the ground. Weirdly though, they appear to be primarily wingless. I guess they extend their legs to parachute?

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Cephalotes atratus wingless queen from Surinam.

Look at these pancake-headed weirdos:

[1] Info taken from AntWiki
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Birbs

"you are about to try that on a species that clawed its way to the top of a 4 billion year deep corpse pile of evolution. one that has committed the genocide you are contemplating several times already. they are the pinnacle of intelligence-based survival techniques and outnumber you 7 billion to 1" - humans vs machine
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LittleLazyLass
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Proud quilt in a bag

Okay, that has to be one of the cooler things I've seen in this thread.
totally not British, b-baka!
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I don't even really like this song that much but the title is pretty relatable sometimes, I guess.
Me
What, you want me to tell you what these mean?
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Words Maybe
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DINOCARID
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Moar fish!

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This is the Peppermint basslet (Liopropoma rubre), a charming (and sought-after) little predator that hails from the deeper reefs in the general vicinity of the Caribbean.
But we're not here to talk about the adult, no, we're here to talk about babies.

The eggs produced by a spawning session are rather typical:

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As are the things that hatch from them:

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But give the little guys a couple weeks:

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No one actually knows why. The theories include siphonophore mimicry and simple distraction. But the plot thickens after their 50th day:

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The mysterious sacs get proportionally larger, and it's been suggested that each one mimics an entire larval fish, complete with a yellowish gut-patch and black eye-spots, probably in order to fool them into making off with their dorsal stringer and not their body. The structure is actually rather variable, possessing up to eleven sacs. That second, newer filament, while usually bare, can also, rarely, develop enigmatic doohickeys of it's own.

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Keep in mind, that up until now, these larvae have been unidentifiable due to all reef basslets' similarity when very young.

Here we have one who's already settled into a miniature version of his adult lifestyle, having retired from the plankton at around seventy days old, soon to shed his now apparently useless baubles, and already working on replacing them with colorful big-boy stripes.

But don't we all come to miss our childhoods, even if we were completely ridiculous?



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Beetleboy
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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That is so cool! Gives me some spec ideas, too. Thanks, DINOCARID!
~ The Age of Forests ~
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Tartarus
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Those plug-headed ants look really interesting. Don't some termites also have something similar?
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HangingThief
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Tartarus
Apr 8 2017, 06:23 PM
Those plug-headed ants look really interesting. Don't some termites also have something similar?
I don't think so, unless you just mean soldiers/major workers using their enlarged heads to block tunnels which is very commonly seen in both ants and termites.


How could you bring up Cephalotes, without including a picture of the fabulous door- head in action?

Spoiler: click to toggle


There's also ants in the genus Colobopsis (formerly included with other carpenter ants in Camponotus) that also has majors with heads flattened into doors, but in a more comical fashion.

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Edited by HangingThief, Apr 8 2017, 11:35 PM.
Hey.


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Carlos
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Adveho in me Lucifero
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Polyglyphanotids (or, as Darren Niah refered to them recently, boreoteiioids). A group of extinct squamates from the Cretaceous that could masticate.

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Lemuria:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/5724950/

Terra Alternativa:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/forum/460637/

My Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/Carliro

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Archeoraptor
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"A living paradox"
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didn´t those squamates survive into the cenozoic or I´m confusing them with another group
Astarte an alt eocene world,now on long hiatus but you never know
Fanauraa; The rebirth of Aotearoa future evo set in new zealand after a mass extinction
coming soon......a world that was seeded with earth´s weridest
and who knows what is coming next...........

" I have to know what the world will be looking throw a future beyond us
I have to know what could have been if fate acted in another way
I have to know what lies on the unknown universe
I have to know that the laws of thee universe can be broken
throw The Spec I gain strength to the inner peace
the is not good of evil only nature and change,the evolution of all livings beings"
"
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IIGSY
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A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
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DINOCARID
Apr 8 2017, 09:18 AM
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The mysterious sacs get proportionally larger, and it's been suggested that each one mimics an entire larval fish, complete with a yellowish gut-patch and black eye-spots, probably in order to fool them into making off with their dorsal stringer and not their body. The structure is actually rather variable, possessing up to eleven sacs. That second, newer filament, while usually bare, can also, rarely, develop enigmatic doohickeys of it's own.
I swear, only ray finned fish are capable of this shit among vertebrates. What other vertebrate does this? What other vertebrate have species where individuals can literally meld together. What other vertebrate lodges itself onto the gills of another animal and stays there for much of it's life? What other vertebrate can swallow animals many times it's size, stretching it's stomach to the point of bursting? What other vertebrate has arthropod-like legs? What other vertebrate has multiple transparent species? What other vertebrate has body that's little more than an amorphous blob? What other vertebrate has multiple species that produce frekin electricity?

Ray fins are clearly the best vertebrates. Suck it amniotes.

Sorry about my burst of excitement. Here's an obscure species.

Similar to the door head ants, the ravine trapdoor spider has a strangely shaped abdomen for closing off it's burrow.
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Projects
Punga: A terraformed world with no vertebrates
Last one crawling: The last arthropod

ARTH-6810: A world without vertebrates (It's ded, but you can still read I guess)

Potential ideas-
Swamp world: A world covered in lakes, with the largest being caspian sized.
Nematozoic: After a mass extinction of ultimate proportions, a single species of nematode is the only surviving animal.
Tri-devonian: A devonian like ecosystem with holocene species on three different continents.

Quotes


Phylogeny of the arthropods and some related groups


In honor of the greatest clade of all time


More pictures


Other cool things


All African countries can fit into Brazil
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Sceynyos-yos
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It even has a spider stamp.

This post has been certified by the Ravine Trapdoor Spider.
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Carlos
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Adveho in me Lucifero
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Archeoraptor
Apr 9 2017, 10:53 AM
didn´t those squamates survive into the cenozoic or I´m confusing them with another group

No, they died in the KT event
Lemuria:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/5724950/

Terra Alternativa:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/forum/460637/

My Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/Carliro

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trex841
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Insect Illuminati Get Shrekt
Apr 9 2017, 11:21 AM
I swear, only ray finned fish are capable of this shit among vertebrates. What other vertebrate does this? What other vertebrate have species where individuals can literally meld together. What other vertebrate lodges itself onto the gills of another animal and stays there for much of it's life? What other vertebrate can swallow animals many times it's size, stretching it's stomach to the point of bursting? What other vertebrate has arthropod-like legs? What other vertebrate has multiple transparent species? What other vertebrate has body that's little more than an amorphous blob? What other vertebrate has multiple species that produce frekin electricity?
Don't snakes do the stretchy stomach thing? Well, probably not to the same extent. But yes, it's amazing what a few hundred million years of parallel evolution can do.
F.I.N.D.R Field Incident Logs
A comprehensive list of all organisms, artifacts, and alternative worlds encountered by the foundation team.

At the present time, concepts within are inconsistent and ever shifting.

(And this is just the spec related stuff)
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