What's your favorite invertebrate phylum? I personally like echinoderms a lot.
>>83522815what's wrong with chordata D:
>>83522819Because if I included chordates then EVERYBODY would pick them because of you vertebrate cucks liking yourselves too much, so I removed the option.
>>83522826alright fine! guess I'll choose cnidaria
>>83522815Cnidaria but I kinda dislike their tedious reproduction cycles. I just think they look coolElse probably the second most normie answer, antropoda
>>83522815Echinoderms are cool, it'd be neat if the vetulocolians and vetulocystids were echinoderm relatives that were going the route of something like early vertebrates(and tunicates) too. I tend to like cnidarians and arthropods, but I just generally like all of the invertebrates :). You'd probably like the pelagothurian, OP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelagothuria>>83522839I've heard that some box jellyfish species seem to skip the anemone stage.
>>83522839arthropoda* i have cancer
>>83522841Oh, didn't know that one. I fondly remember seeing a fried egg jellyfish / cotylorhiza tuberculata near Elba in 2018. So cool, had small fishies chilling next to it
>>83522848Those are some pretty cool jellyfish, also I almost forgot about ctenophores. I do love ctenophores too. Beroids are amazing and actually swallow other ctenophores to eat them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beroidae
>>83522826unfathomably based FUCK the narcissist vertebrate menace
>>83522859WHAT thats so cool, I'm saving this gif, thank you bionon.
>>83522838Lotta cnidaria truthers around here>>83522839What don't you like about it? The medusa stage or the polyp stage? Because I can kinda understand thinking that them being anemones for a while is a bit lame.>>83522841I think the main thing that prevents echinoderms from colonizing land (or even freshwater) is their open vasculatory system which makes them up and die at any salinity above or below the norm. But I have seen that sea cucumber before and I love it, however I raise to you another beautiful example of a freely swimming sea cucumber. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enypniastes>>83522859Ctenophores are kinda chopped tho, like they lack stinging nettles and the diversity of corals that ctenophores have, they're just kinda floating blobs.>>83522865Keep moving backboys, this is an external skeleton/fluid-based musculature neighborhood.
>>83522883Always happy to share, glad you love the webm too B^).>>83522889If I had the ability to then I'd be working hard to try and selectively breed a freshwater sea cucumber. I would've said starfish but I think the muddy environment is more of a problem for many echinoderms trying to colonize freshwater environments. You can imagine how that might mess with their madreporite. Also the headless chicken monster is a nice sea cucumber, but I've also seen them too B^).Also you've been misled about ctenophores! They may very well be the most distal group of animals extant today and despite the lack of stinging cells, they have their own kind of odd cell in the colloblasts. Also benthic ctenophores can look like little bunny slimes, which is cute and also cool. Can't forget the venus girdles either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_girdleThey swim like eels to rapidly move from potential danger.
>>83522914Homestly I don't like being a pessimist, but not a single echinoderm ever colonizing fresh water in the entire fossil history of earth as far as we know definitely makes me a skeptic, but I'd 100% fund your crazy and ethically ambiguous trials anyway. As for which echinoderm would preform the best in a freshwater environment, I actually think feather stars would do better than sea cucumbers since their vascular system is more basal and potentially malleable than the them, or even brittle stars which have been known to go into areas of lower salinity than any other echino species.As for ctenophores, I have to admit you have opened my eyes a bit. I mean perhaps I judges them too harshly to begin with, after all they are the largest creatures to still move around utilizing cilia so that has to count for something.
>>83522815Cnidaria but sadly I'm too dumb to understand most of the documentaries about them
>>83522956That's pretty interesting, brittle stars even swim sometimes too. I'm gonna have to keep this in mind for future endeavors B^). I have more than a few ideas for selective breeding projects for getting things to live in saltwater as well as freshwater too. The gribbles are one such for adapting to freshwater because they're cute and produce their own cellulase enzymes unlike most other wood-eating animals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GribbleAlso if the cilia portion of ctenophores interests you, those beroids I linked to earlier have "macrocilia" that act kind of like teeth and are even coated in something like a venom. To quote from wikipedia:>"Directly inside the mouth opening, in the lining of the gullet, can be found characteristic finger-like processes known as "macrocilia".">"He found they were complex structures composed of 2,000 to 3,000 filaments in a single, conical functional unit.">"The individual macrocilium is between 50 and 60 micrometres long and 6 to 10 micrometres thick"Very neat adaptation for them.>>83522974What's giving you trouble on understanding them? I'm sure it's not as complex as you might think.
>>83522994You know if we're gonna move on to arthropods, what you should try is breeding successive generations of brine shrimp so that only the eggs that hatch without dessicating are bred together, that way you can bring radiodont look-alikes back to the oceans and away from temporary hypersaline lakes.I have to say though, that tooth like cilia adaptation is very cool and it almost reminds me of this one protist I read about a while ago, although it uses its cilia like defensive harpoons and not teeth.
>>83523022I've actually had this idea before! I think I might've even mentioned it off-site somewhere. B. gigas( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branchinecta_gigas ), from the anostracans(fairy shrimp and brine shrimp) actually catches prey and eats it too! B. raptori are also quite cool, pic related. I've made the case before though that anostracans are great for selective breeding projects because of their quick generations and also the ability to make egg banks from the desiccated eggs. You can bring back older generations too to compare or cross-breed :).If you ever remember that protist, I'd love to hear more about it too. You may find spiculosiphon oceana to be cool though, they use sponge spicules to form their bodies and seem to use said spicules to help them catch prey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiculosiphon_oceana
>>83522994>What's giving you trouble on understanding them? I'm sure it's not as complex as you might thinkNothing specific, just in documentaries I see they always just jump straight in to it, talking like I should already know all the words they're saying and it's difficult for me to keep up. I think I am just not seeing ones on my level yet
>>83523059Ah, yeah. There's all sorts of terms to learn in biology, a lot of which can be super niche too. Like phragmosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhragmosisIt sounds like something that'd be complicated but really it's just "turning a part of your body into a thing to block a hole." If you want a freaky kind of cnidarian though, the more recently discovered myxozoans might interest you :). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyxozoaThey're basically microscopic parasites, despite being within the cnidarians.
>>83523046You're a very cool anon anon, I think you'll do a fine job making affronts to God in the very near future. I have to say that I find that sponge mimic very interesting, I'm sure you've heard of this already but it's kinda like how certain nudibranchs incorporate the chloroplasts from the algae it eats to perform its own photosynthesis from which it can subsist off of for months. Or like the nudibranchs that incorporate the venom of the colonial hydrozoans they eat like the man-o-war. Either way, I should be heading to bed now, but jsyk you made my thread sick as hell tonight.
>>83523177Thanks anon, and I'm just happy to have anyone to talk about this stuff with so I'm glad I helped you enjoy your thread too B^). Also that's a good comparison that I hadn't thought of. Sleep well and also have one more cool thing to think about later https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TyphloesusI also love that extinctjak.
>>83522815>current year+10>ctenophora exclusionist
>>83522815I really like how smart squids are, so Mollusca I guess? Squids seem to be the smarty-pants of the sea so they get my vote.
>>83522859Quick, someone edit this with a burping sound effect at the end!!! For science!
>>83522815Easy answer https://youtu.be/hcYuj2Mg4RA?si=gt-7IzWUZ2Zb4xHg
>>83522815Arthropoda absolutely fucking clears.
>>83522815Arthropoda, chordata comes in a second close since it's everything else, but you really can't compete with the sheer power and variety of the arthropods
>>83522815Leeches and worms are cuties so i have to go with Annelida. I'd say Arthropoda too but i'm not counting them, they're a special case.
>>83523769They're not aquatic but jumping spiders are pretty big nerds as well, especially the portia ones. So don't count arthropods out just yet.
>>83525433Why not roundworms or flatworms tho?
for me it's the humble octopus
>>83526656Roundworms are not for me, flatworms are cute too, just not the same way
>>83522815For me it's Arthropoda.>tfw I saw a huge wasp outside my house carrying a half-dead grasshopper, twice its size, to pump it with an egg and shove it down a hole.>tfw I saw the same thing two more times this year.I love all of those little fuckers. Even the ants raiding my pantry whenever I leave my sugar half closed.
>>83525174>>83525332>>83527303Arthropods are the only correct answer I mean ffs look at this shit, they own the seas, skies, and land.
