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In one of his most successful films, the British film director and producer Sir Ridley Scott created a creepy character, the "Alien", which terrified the inhabitants of spaceships and space stations and continuously transported them to the afterlife.
These thoughts immediately popped into my head when I looked at the great photos of this Arctic sea spider from the Pycnogonida class.
"Sea spiders" are the most bizarre arthropods, they are also called "Pantopoda", which means "all legs" and describes them perfectly.
These sea spiders have a very reduced body, where the abdomen has almost disappeared, while the legs are long and claw-shaped.
The head of the spider crab has a long proboscis with an unusual, terminal mouth and several simple eyes.
There is also a pair of claws on the head and a pair of ovaries on which the eggs are carried.
It can be difficult to quickly identify which end of a pycnogonid is the head.
Pycnogonids feed on soft-bodied invertebrates, especially cnidarians, sucking on them with their proboscis, and the larvae of Pycnogonids often live as parasites in the tissues of cnidarians.
One of these predatory creatures, called Austropallene halanychi, was landed from the very cold waters of the Ross Sea in the Antarctic.
Etymology:
The species (halanychi, male genitive) is dedicated to Dr Kenneth M. Halanych, a mentor, colleague, and prolific marine invertebrate scientist whose commitment and dedication to the benthic marine systems in the Southern Ocean has provided a wealth of information related to biodiversity in the Antarctic system.
These thoughts immediately popped into my head when I looked at the great photos of this Arctic sea spider from the Pycnogonida class.
"Sea spiders" are the most bizarre arthropods, they are also called "Pantopoda", which means "all legs" and describes them perfectly.
These sea spiders have a very reduced body, where the abdomen has almost disappeared, while the legs are long and claw-shaped.
The head of the spider crab has a long proboscis with an unusual, terminal mouth and several simple eyes.
There is also a pair of claws on the head and a pair of ovaries on which the eggs are carried.
It can be difficult to quickly identify which end of a pycnogonid is the head.
Pycnogonids feed on soft-bodied invertebrates, especially cnidarians, sucking on them with their proboscis, and the larvae of Pycnogonids often live as parasites in the tissues of cnidarians.
One of these predatory creatures, called Austropallene halanychi, was landed from the very cold waters of the Ross Sea in the Antarctic.
Etymology:
The species (halanychi, male genitive) is dedicated to Dr Kenneth M. Halanych, a mentor, colleague, and prolific marine invertebrate scientist whose commitment and dedication to the benthic marine systems in the Southern Ocean has provided a wealth of information related to biodiversity in the Antarctic system.
