pillbugs

[Liz Day]

I used to love them too.  There's a kind kind we call sowbugs,
that can't roll completely up, and the pillbug kind, that can.
They eat decaying leaves, rotten wood, dead sticks etc.  Hmmm.
Here we go - "a terrestrial isopod crustacean suborder _Oniscoidea_."
(from my dictionary)

There are marine isopod crustaceans too - those little "beach fleas"
that pop and jump around on beaches near washed-up seaweed, and something
that looks the same but swims in the water like a shrimp.

My big fat biolgoy book says "pillbugs are adapted to life in
moist land environments" [this is the section about crustaceans].
Crustaceans are different from insects by having legs on the abdomen
as well as on the thorax... two pairs of antennae (insects one)...
It has a photo of pillbugs but no Latin name... anyway, it sounds like
pillbugs are most closely related to crabs, lobsters, shrimp, and
copepods (microscopic marine thingies that look to a lobster or shrimp
the way a 60's Cadillac looks to a Volkswagen beetle - short and dumpy
with a lot of parts missing).
They aren't related closely to millipedes, spiders, nor to insects.

For what its worth - maybe someone will know the Real Name.


Liz Day
LDAY at iquest.net
Indianapolis, Indiana, central USA, 40 N latitude.
www.iquest.net/~lday

"Being here is a lot like being lost, Arthur."  -- The Tick