Thinking Citizen Blog — Arthropods — The Big Picture (50% Of Animal Biomass) Plus Some Details (Four Subgroups, Hemolymph, Hemocoel)
Thinking Citizen Blog — Wednesday is Climate Change, the Environment, and Sustainability Day
Today’s Topic: Arthropods — the Big Picture (50% of animal biomass) plus Some Details (four subgroups, hemolymph, hemocoel)
Well, compared to plants and bacteria, animals do not account for much in terms of carbon mass. But within the animal category, arthropods are a huge deal — about 50% of the carbon mass of all animal life and about 80% of species.
What do you know about arthropods that the rest of us might not, but would delight to learn?
Or, perhaps you are not an arthropod fan. What phylum interests you the most?
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
THE FOUR MAIN SUB-GROUPS: Hexapoda (includes insects), Myriapoda, Chelicerata (includes arachnids), and Crustaceans
1. “Insects are characterized by having six legs and three body segments, while myriapods (like centipedes and millipedes) have many legs and a segmented body.”
2. “Arachnids (like spiders and scorpions) have eight legs and a segmented body, and crustaceans (like crabs and lobsters) also have a segmented body and multiple legs, but they are often aquatic.”
3. All arthropods molt (a process also called ecdysis) by which they shed an exoskeleton to grow a larger one.
NB: Have you molted lately?
THE HEMOLYMPH BATHES THE ORGANS OF THE ANIMAL IN A CAVITY CALLED A HEMOCOEL AND THE FLUID REENTERS THE HEART THROUGH OPENINGS CALLED OSTIA
1. “Open systems are energetically less demanding than closed systems.”
2. “The lack of pressure-driven blood flow can limit the efficiency of delivering oxygen and nutrients to metabolically active tissues, especially in larger or more active animals.”
To be continued.
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
A LINK TO THE LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED BY THEME:
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
ATTACHMENT BELOW -
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned in the last week related to climate change or the environment.
Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to climate change that the rest of us may have missed. Your favorite chart or table perhaps…
This is your chance to make someone’s day. Or to cement in your own mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something dear to your heart.
