#invertart — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #invertart, aggregated by home.social.
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#SeptemBee* the 21st. I had to do something a little different for the #SciArtSeptember theme of "reef" because it turns out there are no reef bees. In fact, for entirely too long scientists just kind of assumed there were no underwater pollinators at all - who needs it, when water can just carry your gametes around? (What terrible logic - so many land plants are wind pollinated!)
It wasn't until 2022 that someone decided to actually watch underwater plants, in this case algae, and found that invertebrates like this little isopod (Idotea balthic), nicknamed the bumblebee of the sea, do in fact carry pollen around and aid in plant reproduction.
All this AI crap being shoved in our faces but so much of scientific knowledge still just relies on paying attention to your surroundings.
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This silly little creature is a leaf sheep (Costasiella kuroshimae), a type of sea slug capable of photosynthesis. They eat algae which they only partially digest, leaving the photosynthesizing chloroplasts intact. These plastids are sequestered in the leaf-like protrusions all over its body and can temporarily supplement the algae diet with sun-derived glucose.