#limnognathia
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Phylum #19: Micrognathozoa!
Why have a pair of jaws when you can have a fifteenuple of them? This microscopic but extremely intricate system of jaws is definitely the star of today's species, Limnognathia maerski. Yes, species. Found in both Greenland and Antarctica, this tiny creature is the only one known in its entire phylum, Micrognathozoa!
Only discovered in the year 2000, the still little-known Limnognathia shows a body plan like no other. On top of the intricate system of jaws - making it likely a gnathiferan, cousin to arrow worms and rotifers -, an accordion-like thorax links its head and abdomen, the latter ending in a transient anus.
Swimming in spirals with the help of ciliated cells and anchoring itself with an adhesive pad, Limnognathia feeds on bacteria, diatoms and other micro-organisms. As the ventral jaws snatch the prey, they are brought to the main jaw system to be chewed and digested.
Limnognathia's life cycle is still poorly known. Only the youngest specimens found displayed male organs, leading researchers to believe them to be sequential hermaphrodites - changing from male to female during their life cycle. The peculiar distribution around both poles, with most specimens recovered from a single cold spring in Greenland, hints at it being a relict from the Cretaceous, when Greenland was still a tropical reef.
#forms and phyla#micrognathozoa#limnognathia#bioblr#hermaphroditism#cretaceous#greenland#kalaallit nunaat#antarctica
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Phylum Round 1.5
Xenacoelomorpha: Small, flat, worm-like animals that live in marine and brackish sediments, and sometimes around hydrothermal vents. They can be free-living, symbiotic, or parasitic. A unique feature is that their stomachs lack nerve cells, unlike many other animals. Their evolutionary relationship to the rest of Animalia has been highly debated, and very little is known about their lifestyles.
Micrognathozoa: Presumably the smallest phylum, this group consists of a single species, Limnognathia maerski. In addition to being the smallest phylum, it may also be the smallest animal, with an average length of 100 micrometers. Despite this, it has complex jaws with 15 independently moving parts. Since this phylum has not been well-studied, all individuals that have been collected so far have been female.
#worm on worm violence#cw parasites#xenacoelomorpha#micrognathozoa#micro royale#animal bracket#poll bracket#bracket tournament#tumblr bracket#phylum round 1.5#phylum#phyla will now have a link to their propaganda tag for easy reference of propaganda from past rounds!#sorry this one's posting at a weird time lol I just wanted to take care of round 1.5 as fast as possible
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The Weird Microorganism Iceberg
I basically made this on an impulse, please don’t take it too seriously. Feel free to suggest more organisms!
Explanations under the cut.
Tardigrades: You probably all know this one. Commonly said to be polyextremophiles, but this isn’t actually true; while they can survive extreme conditions, they don’t thrive in them. Something you might not know about them is that all of their body segment genes are equivalent to arthropod head genes — meaning they are basically walking heads.
Demodex: Eyelash mites.
Diatoms: Geometric silicon shell creatures.
Nylon-eating bacteria (Paenarthrobacter ureafaciens KI72): Exactly what it says on the tin.
Myxozoa: Single-celled parasitic cnidarians. Lack digestive systems, circulatory systems, gonads, and even muscles in some species. Also may or may not be autonomous cancer cells.
Thiomargarita: The only macroscopic bacteria. Honorary microorganisms for the purposes of this image.
Wolbachia: Parasitic / mutualistic bacteria genus that has created numerous insect species through their effects on reproduction. (Infected females can become capable of parthenogenesis, while infected males are either killed, turned into females, or limited to reproducing only with females infected by the same strain.)
Deinococcus radiodurans: A bacterium which unofficially holds the title of “most extreme extremophile”. Can survive incredibly high doses of radiation, as well as high acidity and very low temperatures.
Dicyemida: Symbiotic (once mistakenly thought to be parasitic) animals that live in cephalopod kidneys. Have alternation of generations and used to be known as “Rhombozoa” (“rhombus animals”).
Facetotectans: Parasitic crustaceans with an unknown adult form. Attempts to artificially induce metamorphosis only produce another juvenile stage, as far as anyone can tell.
Metal-breathing bacteria: Bacteria which use nanowires to accept electrons from metals.
Limnognathia: One of the smallest animals, and has 15-part extensible jaws.
Disulforudis audaxviator: The only known organism to comprise a single-species ecosystem. Lives over a mile underground and feeds off the byproducts of radioactive decay.
Salinella salve: Possibly nonexistent simple animal, allegedly cultured by Johannes Frenzel in 1892 but never found by anyone else.
Warnowiids (Warnowiaceae): A family of dinoflagellates which have modified some of their organelles into an eye… which somehow works well enough for them to aim their stingers at prey, despite them having no brain (or even other cells) to process the images.
Haloquadratum walsbyi: A square that lives in salt.
Dicopomorpha echmepterygis: The smallest known insect, a parasitoid wasp smaller than a Paramecium.
Hemimastigophora: A group of organisms recently discovered to be an early-splitting branch of the eukaryotes.
Monocercomonoides: A genus of “excavate” “protists” (both terms are polyphyletic, lol) that lack mitochondria… or even the genes for them.
Parakaryon myojinensis: The only complete incertae sedis, for which not even the domain is known. Has an odd mix of eukaryote and prokaryote-like features, leading to speculation that they represent a second incidence of endosymbiosis (aka Eukaryota 2.0). Also my blog’s namesake.
Collodictyon: Considered unclassifiable for a long time. Not really that weird in and of itself, tbh.
Kamera lens: Continuing the theme, this is an alga that has proven weirdly difficult to classify despite having been known for centuries (though it’s been narrowed down to the Ochrophyta). Its funny name makes it a pain to look up.
Jeongeupia sacculi: Recently-discovered multicellular(!) bacterium. Unlike everything else on here, it doesn’t have a Wikipedia page (yet).
Meteora sporadica: “Protist” which moves by rowing with a pair of arm-like appendages. Another difficult-to-classify organism, although a study from earlier this year suggests they are related to the Hemimastigophora.
Kakabekia barghoorniana: Apparent Paleoproterozoic living fossil that looks like an umbrella.
Magosphaera planula: A sphere which splits apart into amoeba-like cells, observed by Ernst Haeckel in 1869. Also possibly nonexistent / misidentified.
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Apparently, there is a species of microscopic animal - Limnognathia maerski - that takes the entire phylum (!) for itself only. Imagine yourself in the place of the poor systematican that had to come up with the official names for its genus, family, order... e.t.c.
This guy?
(source)
“Limnognathia maerski is a microscopic freshwater animal, discovered living in warm springs on Disko Island, Greenland, in 1994. Since then, it was also found in Crozet Islands of Antarctica.”
“With an average length of 100 micrometers (μm), it is one of the smallest animals known.”
“It has very complicated jaws, with fifteen separate elements. The parts of the jaw structure are connected by ligaments and muscles. The jaw parts are very small, ranging from 4 μm to 14 μm.”
“All specimens of L. maerski that have been collected have had female organs... The youngest L. maerski specimens collected may also have male organs, and it is now theorized that the animals hatch as males and then become females (sequential hermaphroditism).”
Pretty cool indeed! I like how it's smaller than many single-celled organisms, and has all its body systems stripped to a minimum, and yet it feels the need of jaws with 15 moving parts.
The names of family and order seem to be simply molded on the genus according to usual zoological custom -- Limnognathiidae and Limnognathida. (I think the latter should be "Limnognathiida" but whatev). They seem to have skipped the class altogether, which is pretty understandable, given that here all the ranks between phylum and genus are completely superfluous.
I actually met the guy who described this species once, at a congress. Very friendly and talkative, incredibly thick Danish accent, smell of cigarettes. Besides Limnognathia/Micrognathozoa he also formally described two others phyla of micro-invertebrates -- I think he's the only living scientist who accomplished that.
(always feel free to send me more asks about weird obscure animals, BTW)
EDIT: In fact, if you find this sort of things interesting, I’m working on a series of posts slowly going through all the Tree of Life group by group.
#asks#animals#biology#fucked up#why the hell do ask answers have completely different editing options from regular posts
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30-day phyla challenge day 11: micrognathozoa
i should do pride versions of these periodically
i love these cool trans booger worms
#art#my art#artists on tumblr#micrognathozoa#limnognathia#trans#transgender#pride#lgbt#pride month#pride month 2018#30-day phyla challenge#dimetrodone
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Would you mind putting your worm phyla poem in it’s own post for ease of reblogging/reading? It seems like it’d be fun to memorize!
Gather round and get to know a
List of all the Metazoa
All the world’s countless creatures
Organized by body features
Classified with closest kin.
We call them Phyla. Let’s begin!
Porifera, amorphous things;
Cnidaria, equipped with stings
that help them as they feed and fight;
Symbion who clings on tight
to lobster mouthparts where it dwells;
Brachiopods with sideways shells;
Little wiggly Kinorhynchs;
and we’re still working out the kinks
with Xenacoelomorphs, but they
invented left and right, some say.
Spiny skinned Echinoderms;
and all the seething hordes of worms:
Horsheshoes, Horsehairs, Nematodes,
Nemerteans - we’ve got loads!
Predator Chaetognatha,
Muddy Priapulida,
Jaw-worms never cause a fuss
but Hemichordates grow like us!
Thorny-heads and Gastrotrichs;
Velvet Worms with silk that sticks;
Entoprocta wreathed in cilia;
Annelids, the most familiar;
Flatworms with no cavities.
Now onto others, unlike these -
Ctenophores propelled by combs;
Mollusks in their hardened homes;
and in that group, the guts of squids
may play host to Dicyemids.
The tiny hardy Tardigrade;
Placozoa simply made;
Loricifera in gravel;
Orthonecta who unravel
when their larval stage is done.
Limnognathia, only one.
Rotifera, not really spinning;
Arthropods (I think they’re winning);
Bryozoa, never lonely;
Chordates, tough and quick and bony.
That the last is where we fit,
But we’ve a place in all of it.
From corals, clams, and brittle stars
To frogs and birds and us and ours
We all share common ancestry
to one small cell beneath the sea,
adrift in space around the sun:
the Family of Everyone!
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Card descriptions below cut:
Loricifera - The Brush Head card represents smothering. It can be possible to hold on too tightly, squeezing the air and life out of something simply for the sake of holding tight. In a reading this card is a warning – do not allow thoughts, emotions, people, or any other outside source to smother something, to keep it from breathing and allowing it to live. This can include the subject of the reading. This fascinating phylum of animals contains some of the first known multi cellular creatures to survive in completely anaerobic environments. They have specifically evolved to live without an element crucial to nearly all other members of the kingdom – oxygen.
Micrognathozoa – The Limnognathia card represents luck. Sometimes, even when everything is lined up, carefully considered, and greatly planned for, it is all down to luck. At other times, without planning, thought, or meaning, luck brings something along. Luck is an arbitrary turn of fate or sequence of events. Even with all other cards in the reading carefully considered, one must always account for luck, good or bad, in anything that happens. There is always random chance, and in that chance, it may be important to let go of plans and schemes, or to simply understand that there is no greater machination in the world than chance. This phyla, only recently discovered in the 90s, constitutes one species of incredibly tiny multi-cellular animals which are located solely in warm springs in Greenland. Their discovery is a thing of chance, so small and easily missed, and yet discovered to be unique and interesting.
Mollusca – The Octopus card represents intelligence. And just as diverse as this phylum is, intelligence comes in many diverse forms. In a reading, one should consider where one can use ones own kind of intelligence to work through whatever the issue at hand or question before them there may be. Intelligence may not be of a scholastic kind, there are many others that have allowed our species to thrive. And just as we thrive on our own intelligence, the many diverse and branching kinds of intelligence in this phylum are well noted. These are alien intelligence meant to solve specific problems, but the strength and incredible diversity of this phylum points to the strength of varied intelligence.
Nematoda – The Nematode card represents a key. Any lock without a key is a barrier which cannot easily be surpassed. With the right key, however, that which blocks the way can be removed with ease. It may be time to look for the key, rather than beating one's head on the lock. Does the key lie in the other cards in the reading? Or is the key something from the outside needed to contextualize and understand them? That will depend on the subject and surroundings, but regardless, consider where something may be critical to unlocking a stubborn thing. Nematodes are an incredibly vast and bio-diverse phyla, with lifestyles ranging from predator to prey to parasite with every variation in between. Their biomass makes up an incredible volume of life on earth, and they are absolutely critical to many systems, such a soil quality, water quality, aquatic food webs, terrestrial food webs, and others.
Nematomorpha – The Gordian Worm card represents a knot. A knot is a tangle to be undone or something that binds together. In a reading this can represent a mess to be worked through, or a binding not to be undone. Nematomorpha are known to tie themselves in knots, alone or in groups when mating.
Nemertea – The Ribbon Worm card represents fragility. Within a reading one should look to where fragility lies in the subject. Whether it is a physical fragility, a metaphorical one or an emotional or mental one. In finding fragility, it is important to realize its nature, not forcing stress upon something which may be prone to break. A delicate touch is important and good to have, and recognizing where sensitivity and gentleness are needed is important to understand in many situations. This phyla is host to some truly stunning animals, however, many of the marine members of this species are extremely fragile without the electrostatic pressure of water to keep their bodies together, they simply fall apart on land.
Onychophora – The Velvet Worm card represents stickiness in a metaphorical sense. Sticking to something to see it though to its conclusion, or staying with something despite difficulty can be critical qualities to have. At times, staying with something, and sticking to principles and ethos may see through an otherwise difficult decision or time. When in the reading it should be considered where sticking to something may be needed. This phyla, while having many distinct and interesting characteristics, uses a sticky glue-like slime to catch prey, and demonstrates incredible effectiveness with as much.
Orthonectida – The Orthonectida card represents the parallel. Parallel lines travel along the same path, yet never meet. This is neither positive nor negative this is mathematical. One should consider then, where parallels lie between their lives and others, and whether they dwell on these or accept them as simply things that are. In relation to other cards in the reading, consider where their reading may interact with parallels, how they may reinforce following the same or breaking away from them. This small and poorly known phylum is defined by it's extremely simple body plan, consisting of two concentric layers of cells which surround little more than sex cells and possibly pigments. They are known only as parasites of various marine invertabrates.
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Phylum Round 2
Chordata: All animals with a backbone (Vertebrata), but also some invertebrates. Chordata includes fish, birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians, but also sea squirts and lancelets. All Chordates have a notochord (supportive rod-like structure), a hollow dorsal nerve cord, pharyngeal slits (for filter feeding/breathing), a post-anal tail, and an endostyle (feeding organ) or thyroid (hormonal gland). Interestingly, many Chordates have overcome the need to raise their young in water by laying shelled eggs or carrying young within the womb. Fur, feathers, and scales are all unique adaptations found within Chordata. This phylum exhibits remarkable diversity overall.
Micrognathozoa: Presumably the smallest phylum, this group consists of a single species, Limnognathia maerski. In addition to being the smallest phylum, it may also be the smallest animal, with an average length of 100 micrometers. Despite this, it has complex jaws with 15 independently moving parts. Since this phylum has not been well-studied, all individuals that have been collected so far have been female.
#chordata#micrognathozoa#animal bracket#tumblr bracket#bracket tournament#poll bracket#phylum round 2#phylum
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If micrognathozoa somehow wins, will you just end the showdown? Or will you keep going with the second place phylum or something? (while crowning limnognathia maerski the true winner)
I know this is unlikely to actually happen, but I'm curious what your plan is.
I would celebrate L. maerski as our reigning champion, and probably take a break for a little while to give the little guy time to enjoy its victory! I think it'd make sense, at that point, to do a second try with the runner-up winning phylum eventually.
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Currently thinking about how Limnognathia maerski has been found in both Greenland and Antarctica - almost on opposite sides of the Earth (and apparently environmental DNA from it may have been found in the Pyrenees as well, but that data remains unpublished so 🤷🏼).
This means that this tiny organism, this entire phylum, has a potentially worldwide distribution… and we didn’t even discover it until 1994.
There is so much on this planet that we have yet to discover.
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