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TANTULOCARIDA: FEMALES AND MALES BECOME PREGNANT WITH CLONES OF THEMSELVES! Saving 1 of my favorite crustaceans for the last days of #Crustmas [a thread]. Among the smallest arthropods, tantulocarids are parasites of other micro-crustaceans
All imgs: researchgate.net/publication/26…
All imgs: researchgate.net/publication/26…
Here you can see a male “pregnant” with a sexual adult stage of ITSELF in its abdomen! Hard to wrap your mind around how weird the life cycle of these animals is 🤯 [t/n]
In fact the life cycle is even crazier than that! The tantulus larva infects a small host crustacean (copepod, cumacean, or other). Then the tantulus becomes “pregnant” with dozens of cloned tantulus larvae (bottom) OR pregnant with adult sexual stages (male or female, top)
