#NOT zoology this time

[dougdimmadodo]

Euglena (Euglena spp.)

Family: Euglenoid Family (Euglenaceae)

IUCN Conservation Status: Unassessed

The members of the genus Euglena are microscopic, single-celled eukaryotes that can be found in large numbers in both marine and freshwater habitats worldwide. Exactly what they are, taxonomically speaking, has been the subject of extensive debate: like plants, their bodies contain chloroplasts filled with large amounts of the green pigment chlorophyll which allows them to absorb sunlight and carry out photosynthesis to sustain themselves, but like animals, they are capable of “eating” (when faced with low light levels that impair their ability to carry out photosynthesis they can secrete enzymes that break down dead organic matter in the water around them, allowing them to absorb nutrients from this matter through their cell membranes), moving (with a pair of tiny tail-like structures, known as flagella, allowing them to swim towards food and away from predators such as larger single-celled organisms and tiny animals such as rotifers and fish larvae) and rudimentary “seeing” (with a single redish-orange “eye spot” filtering sunlight onto a light-sensitive structure at the base of the flagella and thereby forming something comparable to a very basic eye, allowing Euglena species to distinguish between light and dark and move towards sunlight.) As such, most authorities now classify Euglena and its relatives as protists, a sort of “miscellaneous” category that includes all eukaryotic organisms that are not animals, plants or fungi. When faced with dry conditions or a lack of sunlight and food, Euglena species can encase themselves in a protective membrane and enter a dormant state until they encounter preferable conditions, and when conditions are ideal they reproduce through binary fission, a form of asexual reproduction in which a single-celled organism essentially makes a copy of its genetic material, separates these two copies at opposite ends of its body and then splits into two distinct but genetically identical individuals. When sunlight is intense and water is abundant, these organisms may reproduce so frequently that the water they live in begins to appear green (or, in the case of the species Euglena sanguinea which uniquely possesses a protective casing of the reddish substance astaxanthin around its chloroplasts to protect them from damage from intense UV radiation, red.)

(Note - on the individual pictured above, the orange mark near the top of the image is the eye spot. The flagella are tiny and transparent so are very hard to see through most microscopes, but they’re there - I promise!)

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Not an animal per say, but a poster I was given for Christmas had these little goopy guys on it and I wanted to learn more about them. I think they’re cool, and while they’re not easily visible protists are still wildlife!

Image Source: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/203631-Euglena

[hawkpartys]

i think of this image approximately every day of my life

Magellanic Penguin (Spheniscus magellanicus) observation by kiwikiu

[markscherz]

Bad Newts: Amphibians are in Serious Trouble

My colleagues and I have just had a paper published in Nature, based on our efforts to assess almost all amphibian species for the IUCN Red Lists. The major takeaway messages:

It is a bad time to be an amphibian

Two fifths of all amphibians are threatened with extinction.

Salamanders are the most threatened group; three fifths of all salamanders are threatened with extinction!

Climate change is a major driver of amphibian declines globally

Habitat loss, especially due to agriculture, is a problem for the vast majority of amphibians

Chytrid pandemics have caused and continue to cause catastrophic declines of both salamanders and frogs

Protected areas and careful management are working as strategies! They are actively improving the outlook of some species

As many as 222 amphibian species may have gone extinct in recent times; of those, 185 are suspected extinct but not yet confirmed.

Our paper is Open Access, you can read it here!

Photo of Atelopus hoogmoedi by Jaime Culebras, used with permission

[aeriona]

fibsh…. in three dimensions....

based off yesterday's artwork

[marinememes]

They are serving in the highest level

[ask-the-dunmeshi-biologists]

Should i be eating the green parts of strawberries ❓️❓️ probably not, but my insides are touching grass‼️‼️‼️

Click for more detail. Our ask is open!

[eddieintheocean]

if youre defending one "bad" animal by telling people that oh wait this other animal is eviler and badder or generally worser actually youre doing it wrong

[t34-mt]

refsheet from june 2023, old art old posture, skinny legend maanuls

another refsheet for artfight execpt this one isn't finished but its enough for ppl to understand, i cant complete it due to my tablet acting crazy and that its the 20TH I NEED TO DO OTHER CHARACTERS, wish i had sooo much moretime i wanted to do more intricate patterns. one day one day ill do complicated patterns like the ones you can find on tiles from Maghreb

also, a western hat! like i mentioned western maanuls took example on the normal shell hats of eastern, this is a sneak peak of an example before i draw a sheet of them in a part 2 post about hats

[horseshoecrabfan]

Please support the habitat of these wonderful creatures here!

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Daily fish fact #799

Stoplight loosejaw!

The stoplight loosejaw is able to see red with a chlorophyll derivative that absorbs red light — the fish obtains this pigment from eating copepods, which actually make up a large portion of its diet! One of its most notable features is its large, red cheek light, but it also has other lights, like a green light under the eye and several small blue lights all over its underside.

[vaguely-concerned]

illario was so right... this one traumatized crow boy really can contain such a universe of pure and childlike wonder at the mere existence -- the concept! -- of wyverns. even through the horrors

[dougdimmadodo]

California Barrel Cactus (Ferocactus cylindraceus)

Family: Cactus Family (Cactaceae)

IUCN Conservation Status: Least Concern

Native to the western Sonoran Desert and eastern Mojave Desert in northern Mexico and the southwestern USA, the California Barrel Cactus grows in dry, sandy soil and typically inhabits scrublands and “forests” of Joshua Trees (the only tree species found throughout most of its range.) Members of this species typically grow in a cylindrical or spherical shape and are covered in a large number of long, thin spines (which, as is typical for a cactus, are highly-modified leaves and serve to protect the cactus from herbivorous animals) which can be used to estimate an individual's age: newly grown spines, which are made of living cells, are deep red in colour, but as the spines develop the cells that make them up die and they become harder and grey in colour, so if an individual has a large number of red spines it is likely young while an individual with entirely grey spines is older. Like almost all plants California Barrel Cacti are photoautotrophs (meaning they are capable of producing nutrients through photosynthesis, a chemical reaction between carbon obtained from the air through tiny respiratory pores on the cactus’ outer surface called stomata and hydrogen obtained from water taken in through the plant’s roots), and like many plants adapted to life in warm, arid conditions they exhibit CAM photosynthesis (a form of photosynthesis in which the stomata only open to take in carbon at night when the air is relatively cool, thereby minimizing water loss through evaporation and allowing the carbon to be put to use in photosynthesis when the sun rises the next day.) The inside of the stem of a California Barrel Cactus is spongy and allows water to be stored as a gel during times of relatively high rainfall to sustain the cactus during times of drought, and as the roots of this species do not go deep into the soil and can re-grow easily California Barrel Cacti can survive being completely uprooted by flash floods, and may even take advantage of floods by allowing them to carry them to areas where the flood water settles, where they will then develop new roots and take in the plentiful water. Like most cacti California Barrel Cacti are hermaphroditic (meaning that every individual can produce both pollen and seeds), and during the early summer they develop “crowns” of yellow flowers which, following pollination by small insects such as bees, develop into small, egg-shaped yellow fruits which are eaten by birds and carried away to allow the seeds within them to develop into mature cacti without competing with their parent.

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I’ll be doing a module on plant biology later this year, so I’m brushing up on plants. This is a particularly cool species!

Image Source: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/54453-Ferocactus-cylindraceus

[hawkpartys]

realized that if you ever wanted to institute an effective mass surveillance network all you'd have to do is get birders on it. they're insanely effective. whenever a notable vagrant bird(one that's extremely out of range) pops up, they have its whereabouts tracked down to the hour, god knows how

[markscherz]

Hello, I was wondering what criteria you personally use to decide if something is a species or a subspecies?

I quite like Kevin de Queiroz's recent take on the matter, so I will refer you to him. There has been quite a bit of subsequent discussion, some of which I agree with, some of which I think is a bit moronic.

TL;DR: They should be treated as a difference of degree, not of kind, and can conveniently be used to capture the grey zone that we know characterises the incipient stages of speciation.

[taxonomytournament]

Taxonomy Tournament: Arthropods

Chilopoda. This class is made up of centipedes, elongated many-legged predators. They lack a waxy cuticle present in insects and arachnids, and so avoid sunlight to prevent drying out.

Diplopoda. This class is made up of millipedes, elongated many-legged detritivores which feed on dead plant matter, though some species eat fungi or drink plant fluid.

[sunsetsands]

Had a thought earlier yesterday about how a one-legged animal would work, which lead to me drawing this horrid thing:

But I decided to do more work with the idea after that because I have chronic worldbuilder’s disease and am simply incapable of making anything not needlessly complicated.

The first step was to set the properties of the world they live in. The general rundown is that it has very low gravity, is very jagged and rocky, and has probably not had life on it for a very long time. Think one of the earlier periods where animals had just moved onto land on Earth. It’s like that, but with ridiculous spring things.

The creature design parts came after that. I drew up some earlier aquatic life, presumably all descended from a spirillum-like multicellular worm thing, which all move through the water by rotating themselves like drills. This probably wouldn’t be the only group of aquatic animal in this world, but it’s the most important for the one-legged creature, since it is descended from one of these (probably the one on the bottom left).

I then went into more depth with the one-legged animal itself, drawing out its method of movement as well as some internal anatomy, though the organs are not very well done. I should probably try to get more practice with that.

I also did some other terrestrial creatures with non-bounce-based ways of getting around.

All of this is probably incredibly unrealistic, but at least it’s fun to do.