Asked an entomologist about “comparably weird invertebrates”; his version includes parasitic crustaceans, Strepsiptera, echinococci, Myxozoa, and Ascidiidae.
Plants: Amorphophallus genus (The entire stalk is a single giant leaf. It sheds that leaf every few years, puts up a giant flower, then sheds that and goes back to growing another single giant leaf?), Orchids, Magnolia (ancient monocots that convergently evolved to look like dicots, flowers that predate bees)
“Ticks” is a diverse group, but I agree they are strange. Like the occasional males in parthenogenetic species? I mean, why do it?..
And my own favorite, if we are permitted to name large groups (can’t say “taxa” here) will be, of course, Fungi Imperfecti. I know it’s a cop out, though, in many senses relative to the OP.
Ticks just repeatedly break my intuitions. How does something that small and R-selected have a 2-year-long lifecycle?
Oh goodness yes, fungi. Two-nuclei sexual stages startled me when I first learned of it. It’s a highly-diverse and successful clade, filling in an array of niches all across the specialist/generalist spectrum, and ranging anywhere from unicellular to syncytial to organisms the size of a city. Plus, many of them seem to manifest that evolutionary pseudo-”inventiveness” that I usually associate with bacteria.
Asked an entomologist about “comparably weird invertebrates”; his version includes parasitic crustaceans, Strepsiptera, echinococci, Myxozoa, and Ascidiidae.
Adding a couple of mine to this list, will probably add more as I think of them...
Invertebrates: Sacculina (parasitic barnacle that hormonally manipulates crabs), Sawflies (primitive hymenopterans with caterpillar-like larvae, some love forest fires), Ticks, Phengaris arion
Vertebrates: Chameleon, Hoatzin, Bats (just… bats)
Plants: Amorphophallus genus (The entire stalk is a single giant leaf. It sheds that leaf every few years, puts up a giant flower, then sheds that and goes back to growing another single giant leaf?), Orchids, Magnolia (ancient monocots that convergently evolved to look like dicots, flowers that predate bees)
I’m giving partial-points to: scale insects, fig wasps, termites, Neotrogla curvata, Pandoravirus, Neuroptera
“Ticks” is a diverse group, but I agree they are strange. Like the occasional males in parthenogenetic species? I mean, why do it?..
And my own favorite, if we are permitted to name large groups (can’t say “taxa” here) will be, of course, Fungi Imperfecti. I know it’s a cop out, though, in many senses relative to the OP.
Ticks just repeatedly break my intuitions. How does something that small and R-selected have a 2-year-long lifecycle?
Oh goodness yes, fungi. Two-nuclei sexual stages startled me when I first learned of it. It’s a highly-diverse and successful clade, filling in an array of niches all across the specialist/generalist spectrum, and ranging anywhere from unicellular to syncytial to organisms the size of a city. Plus, many of them seem to manifest that evolutionary pseudo-”inventiveness” that I usually associate with bacteria.
Pseudo-”inventiveness”?