Tag detritivore

Common Earthworm

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The Common Earthworm (Lumbricus terrestris) is a terrestrial (land) invertebrate (without a backbone) in the Lumbricidae family of earthworms. It is also known as the Lob Worm.

The Common Earthworm is pinkish-greyish-purple. The body is cylindrical and a tube-in-a-tube, with a series of segments, called metamerisms. The last segment is the tail, and the first segment has the mouth and prostomium (flat paddle-shaped lobe). Each segment has bristle-like hairs called lateral setae. These hairs help it to move by gripping the surface of the soil. It has pores (holes) in its body that enables it to breathe. It exudes a fluid that keeps the body moist and stops it from drying out. 

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Chocolate Chip Sea Star

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The Chocolate Chip Sea Star (Protoreaster nodosus) is a marine (saltwater) starfish in the Oreasteridae family. It is also known as the Horned Sea Star. It is an invertebrate, because it does not have a backbone.It is not a fish, so scientists prefer to say that it is a sea star.

The Chocolate Chip Sea Star has five elongated tube limbs, called arms or feet. It has several black or dark-brown tubercles on its arms. It has a greyish body with dark stripes that connect the tubercles. 

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Protaetia Beetle

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The Protaetia Beetle (Cetonia aeruginosa or Protaetia aeruginosa) is an insect in the Scarabaeidae family of chafers. It is related to the Scarab Beetle. 

The Protaetia Beetle has an oval body with six legs. It is metallic iridescent green with a copper-brown head. Its underbelly is coppery brown. The male has dents on its wing cases, whereas the female has fewer or no dents. Its wing cases protect its wings.

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Red Knob Sea Star

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The Red Knob Sea Star (Protoreaster linckii) is a starfish. It is a marine (saltwater) invertebrate, because it does not have a backbone. It is also known as the Red Knob Starfish, the Red Spine Star, or the African Red Knob Sea Star. It is not a fish, so scientists prefer to say that it is a sea star.

The Red Knob Sea Star has five elongated tube limbs, called arms or feet. It has several bright red tubercles on its arms. It has a grey body with red stripes that connect the tubercles. 

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Detritivore

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What is a detritivore?
 
A detritivore is an animal that eats small particles of dead organic (animal and plant) material. 
 
It is a detritivorous animal because it eats detritus. 
 
Dead leaves, dead plants, dead animal bodies, and even dead skin is detritus. 

      Springtail

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      The Springtail (Microfalcula delamarei) is a micro-small, wingless hexapod. A hexapod has three pairs of legs (6 legs), but it is not an insect. 

      It is entognathous, which means that is has internal mouthparts in a gnathal (jaw) pouch. It is in the Collembola class and the Entomobryoidea super-family – like a terrestrial crustacean, because scientists think that it evolved from marine (saltwater) shrimp, crabs, and lobsters. Scientists first thought that it was an insect, but they have now changed the category to an entognathous animal.

      The Springtail has three parts: the head capsule, a thorax (with three segments and 6 legs), and an abdomen (with five segments). Therefore, it looks like an insect. It has small antennae, two eyes, and mouthparts. The mouthparts have a pair of jaws. The two eyes are called composed eyes, because they are composed of 8 single eyes. It does not have a throat, so it breathes through a porous cuticle. 

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      Hissing Cockroach

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      The Hissing Cockroach (Gromphadorhina oblongonota) is an insect in the roach family. It is also known as a Wide-Horned Hisser. 

      The Hissing Cockroach is dark-brown to black with red-brown on its thick, waxy exo-skeleton.  It has orange-brown sections with small spots on each side. The male has thicker, hairier antennae than the female. The male also has horn-type structures on the pronotum (the front section of its thorax). Unlike most cockroaches, the Hissing Cockroach is wingless. It has 6 legs, with pads and hooks on its feet that enable it to climb. It can even climb smooth glass.

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      Brittle Star

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      The Bristle Star (Ophiomastix janualis) is a tropical marine (saltwater) echinoderm, related to the starfish. It is also called a Serpent (Snake) Star. It is not a fish. It is an invertebrate (animal with no backbone) and an ophiuroid.

      The Bristle Star has five long, slender whip-like arms radiating symmetrically from a central coin-shaped or disc-shaped body. The body contains its mouth and internal organs. Its mouth, on the underside of the body, has five toothed jaws. Its mouth is both the entrance to its internal organs and the exit to release waste.

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      Common Marine Hermit Crab

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      The Common Marine Hermit Crab (Pagurus bernhardus) is a saltwater aquatic decapod (10-armed) crustacean. It is also known as the Soldier Crab.

      Hermit crabs include the Marine Hermit Crab, which lives in saltwater, and the Land Hermit Crab, which is terrestrial in tropical regions.

      The Common Marine Hermit Crab is a crab inside a shell – its mobile home. It finds empty mollusc shells to live in. It has a long soft body – not like land crabs which have a hard exo-skeleton – which is why it looks for a hard shell to protect it. It can put its whole body inside the shell. As it grows, it looks for larger shells.

      The Common Marine Hermit Crab has a spirally-curved soft body (abdomen) with a columella on the tip, which is used to hold onto the shell it occupies. It has 10 appendages (legs, called pereiopods), but two of them are claws, called nippers, pinchers, or chelipeds. Its large black compound eyes are at the end of an eyestalk. It has gills to breathe (like fish).

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      Jewelled Blenny

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      The Jewelled Blenny (Salarias fasciatus) is a small tropical marine (saltwater) fish. It looks like a minute eel, but it is a rockskipper. It is often called the Lawnmower Blenny.

      The Jewelled Blenny can change colour (camouflage itself) to blend into its surroundings. However, it is usually olve to brown, with dark bars and round or elongated white spots. It has no scales. It has small bright blue spots with dark outlines along the rear of its body. It has large high-set bulbous eyes. It has a continuous dorsal fin (back fin), which has 3-17 spines.

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      Tanzanian Red Legged Millipede

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      The Tanzanian Red Legged Millipede (Ephibolus pulchripes) is a large Diplopoda – arthropod with two pairs of jointed legs – from Tanzania and southern Kenya. Millipede means a thousand legs, but it does not have a thousand legs. It is a myriapod – a many-legged animal.

      The Tanzanian Red Legged Millipede has a long black body, with hard plates, and bright red legs (up to 750). The male has a shiny body and the female has a dull body. Its head is red and round with a pair of large jaws. On its head are two antennae.

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      Dalmatian Linckia Starfish

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      The Dalmatian Linckia (Linckia multifora) is a starfish, a marine (saltwater) invertebrate, because it has no backbone. It is also called the Spotted Linckia or Multicolour Sea Star. It is not a fish.

      The starfish is an echinoderm (meaning prickly skin) in the Asteroidea class (meaning star-shaped).

      It has five elongated tube limbs (feet or arms) pink or reddish mottled with white and yellow colours that taper slightly towards the tips.

      The surface has a rough texture and is covered in granulations.

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