The macro photography looks bizarrely uniform and the poses contrived. I feel like a sleuth trying to decide if this is AI generated or not. I suspect it isn't, but I'm somewhat distressed at how suspicious I am of cool things now.
Or they know how this animals look in the real life.
Take in mind that the first page cover different morphs of the same genus. Maybe even the same species. They all look variations generated by computer, because they all are Cubaris sp and have exactly the same cephalon shape.
Plenty of worries if those images are AI-generated. I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt as he's a macro photographer: https://www.nickybay.com/
As much as the website looks nice, the design looks AI generated - image loading animations, or quotation marks for species names. (Both are needles decorations.)
I worked with a woman who kept isopods as pets. She had a little terrarium at work with all sorts of breeds of isopods. That's where I learned you could buy isopods online.
If the photography was mediocre, nobody would accuse it of being AI, but because it's the flawless photography of a true professional, suddenly it's highly suspect.
I'm confused. Should I be seeing something on this site?
From the comments, there are apparently supposed to be amazing photos. But I see text, I see black backgrounds, but no photos--none at all. Neither on Firefox, nor on Chrome. Just empty boxes where say "Amber Ducky" should be.
This brings me back to when the internet was full of sites like this. Small artful projects that had no goal but to teach us a tidbit about a niche topic, just because someone cared enough to share it. The internet felt smaller and more intimate than it does now in this era of social media. Bookmarked, will without a doubt explore every inch of that site.
There are several different, sometimes overlapping markets for them.
Reptile and amphibian keepers use them, along with live plants, to set up a bioactive tank that is relatively self-cleaning and self-maintaining.
Keepers of very small reptiles sometimes maintain colonies as feeder insects.
And still others skip the scaly middlemen and keep isopods as pets. They can get hilariously expensive. Just a couple of years ago, rubber duckies (featured on this site) used to be $90 a pop due to their rarity and difficulty in keeping them. Since they exploded in popularity, however, they're a much more reasonable^1 $15 a head or so.
Too many comments about AI and not enough fun facts about isopods! Can anyone tell me more about them? How do their eyes work? They look like blackberries in a lot of the species.
That means that they are made of thousands of small eyes, named ommatidia, each of which detects the light coming from a certain direction, so that all together can provide an image. Each small bump that you see on the surface of their blackberry-like eyes is one of the small eyes, i.e. one of the ommatidia.
Each of the ommatidia is a long tube, having at the interior end one or more photoreceptors. The length of the tube ensures that only the light coming from a direction parallel to the axis of the tube can reach the photoreceptors, instead of being absorbed by the walls of the tube.
In the photographs, it can be seen that even the species that are otherwise mostly transparent have black eyes, or at least eyes of a dark color. This is a requirement for any kind of eye, because in order to detect light it must absorb it. So in many animals where the eyes may not have a more obvious structure they can still be recognized by being black or at least dark spots.
In most compound eyes each of the ommatidia corresponds with 1 pixel of the image that they see, so the number of pixels in an image is only of a few thousands, thus they have poor angular resolution in comparison with vertebrates or cephalopods.
There are compound eyes where several ommatidia correspond to a single pixel, trading off angular resolution for a greater sensitivity in low light, or where each of the ommatidia corresponds to several pixels, because it contains a small lens that can separate the light coming from different directions, projecting it on distinct photoreceptors.
This is lovely. My daughter's in grammar school, and keeps bringing them home. She now has the site open on my iPad, and is drawing them. Thank you for sharing this!
My youngest is 14, and she still brings them home. After it rains I'm "banned" from the front door because I'm "too clumsy". Future entomologists unite!
TIL about isopod "nuptial rides". These may go for "many days". Yes, other males may try and dislodge so riders beware. In sum, nature can be vulgar and very few species get a break when it comes to love life.
Only the terrestrial ones. Sea isopods are a different planet (see Bathynomus).
The kangaroos from the invertebrate world. This group contains one infamous taxonomic troll move, when an English decided to name several different genus with anagrams. So everybody now needs to remember the differences between Nerocila, Cirolana, Conilera, Rocinela, Anilocra and Olencira. All because he wanted to impress a woman called Caroline. To add insult to the crime he created also Livoneca, that everybody was (wrongly) calling Lironeca, just because exceptions are annoying to remember. The joke was expanded by a second taxonomist later with Renocila and in 1990 a third author created Creniola and Norileca. I would wish to strangle all of then with my own hands. Slowly.
Nicky Bay is incredibly talented and prolific, my favourite macro photographer by far! Big fan of his spider photography, there are many cases where the only high-quality pics of some species will be his. I'm not as deep in the isopod world but this looks like an invaluable resource for people trying to ID + explore them.
34 comments
[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 72.8 ms ] threadTake in mind that the first page cover different morphs of the same genus. Maybe even the same species. They all look variations generated by computer, because they all are Cubaris sp and have exactly the same cephalon shape.
From the comments, there are apparently supposed to be amazing photos. But I see text, I see black backgrounds, but no photos--none at all. Neither on Firefox, nor on Chrome. Just empty boxes where say "Amber Ducky" should be.
The biggest terrestrial can reach 3cm or so, while the largest marine can reach 30-50cm.
Reptile and amphibian keepers use them, along with live plants, to set up a bioactive tank that is relatively self-cleaning and self-maintaining.
Keepers of very small reptiles sometimes maintain colonies as feeder insects.
And still others skip the scaly middlemen and keep isopods as pets. They can get hilariously expensive. Just a couple of years ago, rubber duckies (featured on this site) used to be $90 a pop due to their rarity and difficulty in keeping them. Since they exploded in popularity, however, they're a much more reasonable^1 $15 a head or so.
[1]: For certain definitions of reasonable.
That means that they are made of thousands of small eyes, named ommatidia, each of which detects the light coming from a certain direction, so that all together can provide an image. Each small bump that you see on the surface of their blackberry-like eyes is one of the small eyes, i.e. one of the ommatidia.
Each of the ommatidia is a long tube, having at the interior end one or more photoreceptors. The length of the tube ensures that only the light coming from a direction parallel to the axis of the tube can reach the photoreceptors, instead of being absorbed by the walls of the tube.
In the photographs, it can be seen that even the species that are otherwise mostly transparent have black eyes, or at least eyes of a dark color. This is a requirement for any kind of eye, because in order to detect light it must absorb it. So in many animals where the eyes may not have a more obvious structure they can still be recognized by being black or at least dark spots.
In most compound eyes each of the ommatidia corresponds with 1 pixel of the image that they see, so the number of pixels in an image is only of a few thousands, thus they have poor angular resolution in comparison with vertebrates or cephalopods.
There are compound eyes where several ommatidia correspond to a single pixel, trading off angular resolution for a greater sensitivity in low light, or where each of the ommatidia corresponds to several pixels, because it contains a small lens that can separate the light coming from different directions, projecting it on distinct photoreceptors.
That’ll be seriously weird.
The kangaroos from the invertebrate world. This group contains one infamous taxonomic troll move, when an English decided to name several different genus with anagrams. So everybody now needs to remember the differences between Nerocila, Cirolana, Conilera, Rocinela, Anilocra and Olencira. All because he wanted to impress a woman called Caroline. To add insult to the crime he created also Livoneca, that everybody was (wrongly) calling Lironeca, just because exceptions are annoying to remember. The joke was expanded by a second taxonomist later with Renocila and in 1990 a third author created Creniola and Norileca. I would wish to strangle all of then with my own hands. Slowly.
100% generated website from the code to the text to the pictures.