First thing I thought of: Alien.
When I read the article’s last line – “…not one of the approximately 70,000 described species of crustaceans was known, until now, to be venomous.” – my first thought was, “Maybe not venomous, but certainly unkind.”
For those interested the paper is open access, available from Oxford Journals here. It looks like remipedes have been thought of as probably-venomous for a while, but the evidence has not been certain; here they have changed that with a detailed analysis of the venom proteins and injection mechanism.
Oh good, I was hoping for a venomous crustacean.
A “blind, aquatic cave dweller” - And adorable.
Venoms are especially common in three of the four major groups of arthropods, such as insects. Crustaceans, however, are a glaring exception to the rule
Cladistics pedant says: But insects are crustaceans, just highly-specialised ones, modified for dry-land existence.
but, but, isn’t Taxonomy like Fashion in that it changes every season ?
just let it lie a few days and every Crustacean gets toxic.
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