Monday, July 14, 2014

Now this is a pill bug...

Isopods of the genus Saduria are common nearshore animals in Arctic shores of Alaska.  Saduria entomon gets pretty big, this one is over 2 inches long.  We have a couple of species in Alaska including S. entomon and S. sibirica.

Sadurid isopopds are canivores and scavengers feeding opportunistically on anything they can find.

Here is a photo of the head. These are amazingly adaptive and resilient animals.  They survive in freezing conditions, low oxygen, little food, and in a wide range of habitats from gravel to mud.  Once, a student assistant was sorting a poorly preserved benthic sample and after ~6 months of preservation, he found a small Saduria swimming in the jar.  No other organisms were present indicating it ate everything else in the sample!   Talk about tough, it was surviving in a weak formalin solution, there would have been little oxygen, eventually, no food, and the animals it ate contained formalin as well.  I vote for these as being the tough guys of the Arctic.



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