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Obscure Taxa; For interesting or obscure organisms you'd like to share.
Topic Started: Dec 14 2016, 09:46 PM (48,945 Views)
Rodlox
Superhuman
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/discussion. :)

I'm reminded of the line at the start of one of David Quammen's articles, where he's asked "Quick, what's the largest mammal you've never heard of?" and he goes through a few large mammals (panda, gorilla, etc), and knowing that, since he's heard of them, they can't be the answer.
(the answer is: the Okapi)
.---------------------------------------------.
Parts of the Cluster Worlds:
"Marsupialless Australia" (what-if) & "Out on a Branch" (future evolution) & "The Earth under a still sun" (WIP)
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DINOCARID
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Adolescent
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Larval dragonfish are really goofy looking, and although they are much more serious looking as adults, they still retain a metamorphal memento: their eyestalks aren't absorbed, but internalized, coiled behind their eyes even as adults! Also, since I think everyone forgot that you can also post obscure facts instead of taxa, I wanted to say that although a deer fawn's supposed odorlessness is a myth, a young fawn does have a rather bizarre defensive adaptation: they will freeze, curled up on the leaves, drop their heartbeat from 175 to 60 beats per minute, and slow their breathing dramatically. Usually, they won't move even if touched, a state known as "alarm bradycardia" Problems occur when they do this in the way of a moving car. And while I understand that everyone is handling the definition-of-obscurity problem in a very relaxed and mature manner, does anyone want me to just change the name of the thread? Show-and-tell or something?
Check out my deviantart here
Projects
The Fieldguide to Somnial Organisms
The Tetrarch (coming soon)


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Rodlox
Superhuman
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DINOCARID
Apr 16 2017, 07:14 PM
Larval dragonfish are really goofy looking, and although they are much more serious looking as adults, they still retain a metamorphal memento: their eyestalks aren't absorbed, but internalized, coiled behind their eyes even as adults! Also, since I think everyone forgot that you can also post obscure facts instead of taxa, I wanted to say that although a deer fawn's supposed odorlessness is a myth, a young fawn does have a rather bizarre defensive adaptation: they will freeze, curled up on the leaves, drop their heartbeat from 175 to 60 beats per minute, and slow their breathing dramatically. Usually, they won't move even if touched, a state known as "alarm bradycardia" Problems occur when they do this in the way of a moving car. And while I understand that everyone is handling the definition-of-obscurity problem in a very relaxed and mature manner, does anyone want me to just change the name of the thread? Show-and-tell or something?
changing the title now would just be confusing; if it was going to be done, it ideally would've happened during the first five pages, yes?


the alarm bradycardia's a neat feature. *tries to picture it being retained into adulthood - something Fainting Goats, or an outcome stranger still?*
.---------------------------------------------.
Parts of the Cluster Worlds:
"Marsupialless Australia" (what-if) & "Out on a Branch" (future evolution) & "The Earth under a still sun" (WIP)
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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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I agree with Rodlox. Just keep the same title, but perhaps give a different description in the first post. I think that this is a really good topic, very useful and informative, does anyone else agree that for ease of finding this and a show of its usefulness, it should be pinned?
~ The Age of Forests ~
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DINOCARID
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Adolescent
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To have something that I started be pinned would bring me more happiness than it probably should.
Check out my deviantart here
Projects
The Fieldguide to Somnial Organisms
The Tetrarch (coming soon)


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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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DINOCARID
Apr 17 2017, 07:38 AM
To have something that I started be pinned would bring me more happiness than it probably should.
Oh, you're not alone there. To have one of my projects pinned has become a long-term goal for me, and if I had a project pinned, I would probably laugh and cry all at once. I live and breath speculative evolution, it means a lot to me.

Aaaanyway, moving on. I should post some strange invertebrates and other marine life in the upcoming days and weeks. I've been finding lots of cool stuff from my Reefworld research.
~ The Age of Forests ~
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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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I always thought tetradontiformes where a chubby bunch.

Also, about the tuna being closer to seahorses than bilifish. How. Why. Man, it seems that Ray fins have just a dynamic and evolution aa tetrapods.

Now that we've seen all the weird shit fish do, think of this. Imagine if tetrapods did the same things. Mammals with eyestalks. Reptiles where the much smaller male melds into the female. I know I'v asked this before, but is this stuff even possible in tetrapods?


Anyway, time do my next contribution.
Posted Image

Meet the tantulocarids. They are a group of marine, ectoparasitic crustaceans that feed on other crustaceans. A prominent feature is that they are super tiny. They include the smallest known arthropods. As expected, they have very reduced anatomy.
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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Sheather
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This is a great thread and it has been pinned!
Posted Image
The Gaiaverse

| Eden | Terra Metropolis | Life of the Sylvan Islands |


Other Spec Evo

| Sheatheria | Serina | The Last Dinosaur

A Wholesome and Good Thing

| Sam |
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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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Sheather
Apr 17 2017, 10:45 PM
This is a great thread and it has been pinned!
Guys, we did it!
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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Dapper Man
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* I am fed up with dis wuurld *
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Yay for pinning :)
Speculative Evolution:

Manitou; The Needle in the Haystack.
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DINOCARID
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Adolescent
 *  *  *  *  *
I know it's just a little community thing, and I want to get an actual project pinned, but wow. This is cool.
Check out my deviantart here
Projects
The Fieldguide to Somnial Organisms
The Tetrarch (coming soon)


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Vorsa
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Mysterious tundra-dwelling humanoid
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Congrats Dino!!
My Deviantart: http://desorages.deviantart.com/

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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Inceptis
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In-tro-vertebrate
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This is one of the better threads I've seen on here and have read the entire thing, Dino. Then again given how new I am, that doesn't mean that much. Besides, most of the reason I've read from start to finish was to make sure no one has already shared my favorite animals: the pteropods.

Posted Image

These guys diverged from other opisthobranchs about 35 million years ago. While their relatives include the headshield slugs, which are pretty cool, they're not the focus. Now, if you know your latin roots, you've probably already figured out that their name means "wing foot", and they entirely deserve it having earned the common name of sea butterflies and sea angels. The clade is made up of two distinct groups, Thecosomata and Gymnosomata. First, the thecosomates.

These guys are some of the more common plankton out there, and around Antarctica, Limacina helicina can in some areas make up 50% of the zooplankton present. They feed by casting out a net of mucus and draw it back in, filled with plankton. After eating the whole net, they make a new one and repeat the process. Even more interestingly, they swim more like insects and hummingbirds, rocking their shell back and forth at an angle of 60 degrees sometimes.

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Some of the shelled forms have straight shells instead of coiled, probably leading to their more carnivorous relatives, the sea angels.

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Sea angels feed almost exclusively upon sea butterflies, in a rather fearsome way. Pushing out six cones from their head, they crush their prey with a horizontally aligned beak. I cannot give it justice, so I will just include a picture:

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They're essentially neo-cephalopods.
Edited by Inceptis, Apr 18 2017, 08:20 PM.
This was getting fairly big.
Spoiler: click to toggle
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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
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Oh, the spec potential.
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
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Sphenodon
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Calcareous

I'd say this thread's pinning warrants a celebratory mega-post!

Embioptera, known more commonly as the webspinners, are an order of neopteran insects with worldwide distribution. Roughly 2,000 species are believed to exist, with the largest portion of these being centered in tropical regions.

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A diagram depicting a labelled male/female pair of Embia major, a Himalayan species.

In terms of overall physical characteristics, embiopterans are rather uniform for a taxonomic order of insects.They range in size from approx. 15-20 mm., and all feature a highly elongated bauplan with fairly robust forelimbs. Males differ from females in possessing a slightly more gracile build than females, and in most cases possessing wings (which are stiffened hydraulically with hemolymph prior to and during flight). This is not always the case, however; some species have wingless males, and certain populations of some species lack males completely, instead reproducing through parthenogenesis. A more unifying characteristic of males throughout the group is that while possessing mandibles similar to those of their feminine counterparts, they do not eat, instead living for only short periods of time during which they search for mates. Females feed on lichen, mosses, and tree bark.

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A female embiopteran of indeterminate species.

Perhaps the most notable feature of embiopterans is their namesake ability to produce silk from glands on their forelimbs (which in some cases can number up to 150 on each limb, allowing for massive silk production at little metabolic cost), with which they produce their namesake webs. These webs, referred to as galleries, are comprised of networks of chambers and narrow, cylindrical tunnels which are formed on bark, rocks, leaf litter, or other such substrates. Female embiopterans and their immature offspring spend most of their existence within these tunnels, a fact which reflects itself in embiopterans' thin, elongated body structure.

Webs are primarily "grown" towards new food supplies as old ones become depleted, allowing for females to rapidly retreat towards their protective galleries at the slightest sign of danger. While not explicitly social, embiopterans are not explicitly territorial, either; in fact, they watch over their eggs during incubation and sometimes feed new hatchlings chewed plant matter. This can sometimes lead to groups of multiple related females inhabiting the same gallery.

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A fairly sizable webspinner gallery.

Another obscure group of insects is Grylloblattidae, known informally as the ice crawlers. A small family, the group consists of thirty-four species spread throughout five genera; their closest relatives are the recently-rediscovered Mantophasmatidae, their sister group and the only other extant family in the order Notoptera.

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Depiction of Grylloblatta campodeiformis, a North American grylloblattid. The type species of the group, it was discovered in 1914 in Alberta's Sulphur Mountains.

As indicated by their common name, grylloblattids are psychrophilic, displaying a preference for temperatures between 1-4 degrees Celsius. They are often found within litter or beneath debris in cold environments, typically in montane areas. Grylloblattids are nocturnal; having either reduced or missing eyes, they instead use their elongated antennae and cerci to navigate and forage. While displaying a marked preference for deceased arthropods, grylloblattids are highly generalistic in their dietary patterns, and can subsist on plant-heavy diets when conditions dictate.

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A live specimen of G. campodeiformis.

While the three murrelet species in the genus Brachyramphus - the marbled murrelet (B. marmoratus), long-billed murrelet (B. perdix) and Kittlitz's murrelet (B. brevirostris) - are not necessarily terribly obscure in the face of other taxa, they still deserve mention for their rather unusual nesting habits.

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A marbled murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus) taking flight from the water's surface.

Rather than nesting on shorelines, they nest far inland; the long-billed and marbled murrelets nest in old-growth conifer forests, while Kittlitz's murrelet nests above the treelines of mountains. Nesting is solitary rather than colonial as is the norm for auks, with a single egg being laid in a simple depression (typically on a mossy tree limb or hollow in the case of the marbled and long-billed murrelets, or simply on bare open ground in the case of Kittlitz's).

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A 15-day old Kittlitz' murrelet chick (Brachyramphus brevirostris) sitting in its humble cradle.

Incubation takes approximately one month, followed by forty days of parental care for the hatchling prior to it flying seaward unaccompanied to begin its adult life. Breeding success is rather low due to the species' precarious nesting habits, which in more recent years has been compounded in the case of the long-billed and marbled murrelets by logging of the old-growth forests upon which the birds rely for nesting. While this does not impact the Kittlitz's murrelet, all three species are impacted negatively by oceanic pollution (the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 is believed to have killed off between 5-10% of the contemporary population of Kittlitz' murrelets).

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Nest of a marbled murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus) on the branch of an old-growth conifer.

The seedsnipes (family Thinocoridae) are a small group of four species of charadriiform waders found in South America. Their exact phylogenetic placement within Charadriiformes is uncertain; some postulate they form a group with the jacanas, painted snipes, and Australian plains wanderer, but definitive classification has yet to take place.

The most outwardly notable distinction of the seedsnipes is that they have transitioned from a waterside to land-based lifestyle, similar to the (not closely related) buttonquails of the family Turnicidae. Going a step further, they have also transitioned from an invertebrate-based diet to an herbivorous one, with most of their sustenance coming from seeds and vegetation. Their physiology has changed markedly from the charadriiform norm to reflect this; the stilt-like legs of their relatives have transitioned into less extreme dimensions, and their beaks have shortened drastically and become more robust.

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A least seedsnipe (Thinocorus rumicivorus), the smallest and most widespread species.

The larger two species in the family - the white-bellied (Attagis malouinus) and rufous-bellied (Attagis gayi) seedsnipes - are similar in size to partridges or ptarmigans, with the rufous-bellied seedsnipe sometimes weighing up to 14 oz. (397 g). The other two species, the least (Thinocorus rumicivorus) and grey-breasted (Thinocorus orbignyanus), are significantly smaller, being comparable in size to medium-sized passerines.

Seedsnipes inhabit a broad range of somewhat arid habitats; the rufous-bellied seedsnipe inhabits the high Andes, while the other three species occur with wide distribution across South America's grasslands, steppes, and semiarid scrublands. Fairly common where they are found, none of the four species are considered threatened by the IUCN.


Footage of a pair of rufous-bellied seedsnipes (Attagis gayi) feeding on cushion plants at Papallacta Pass, Equador.
Edited by Sphenodon, Apr 19 2017, 12:24 AM.

We have a Discord server! If you would like to join, simply message myself, Flisch, or Icthyander.
Some of my ideas (nothing real yet, but soon):
Refugium: A last chance for collapsing ecosystems and their inhabitants.
Pansauria: A terraforming project featuring the evolution of exactly one animal - the marine iguana.
Mars Renewed: An insight into the life of Mars thirty million years after its terraforming by humankind.
Microcosm: An exceedingly small environment.
Alcyon: A planet colonized by species remodeled into new niches by genetic engineering.
Oddballs: Aberrant representatives of various biological groups compete and coexist.

..and probably some other stuff at some point (perhaps a no K-T project). Stay tuned!
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