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What group is more diverse?

Plankton or Bugs?

Are plankton just... sea bugs?

@futurebird I might go the other way and say that "bugs" are just "land crustaceans." About a decade ago(?), insects were re-grouped into the "pancrustacea", a large group including crustaceans (including lots of plankters, like Daphnia and Copepods). So, insects are largely the crustaceans of the land.

@tedpavlic

Are you... are you saying ants are crabs now???

@futurebird They are closely related relative to relationships with most other animals, yep. :-)

@futurebird Here's a phylogeny showing where insects and crabs fit relative to each other within the group of pancrustacea.

@tedpavlic @futurebird

Wait, so crabs are far more closely related to insects than spiders are?!

@futurebird @inthehands @tedpavlic It makes sense to me. Crabs have exoskeletons like ants but spiders are furry. 😍

@inthehands @indigoparadox @futurebird There are certainly a lot of fuzzy/furry insects (and velvet ants are wasps, not ants, after all). Spiders are also very closely related to other arachnids, such as scorpions, of which many are not very furry at all. So furriness isn't a key characteristic.

Most of the shared characteristics of pancrustacea (that distinguish them from others, like the arachnids) are neurological, developmental, and molecular and difficult to see with the better naked eye.

@inthehands @indigoparadox @futurebird @tedpavlic
setae , or "arthropod fuzz" occur in many, maybe even all, groups of arthropods; most (all?) crustaceans have sensory setae of various sorts, some crabs are remarkably fuzzy, krill use setae to capture microplankton, as do many other types of filter-feeding crustaceans. Annelids also have setae, though I don't know if those are homologous to arthopod setae.

yeti crab:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwa_(cr

en.wikipedia.orgKiwa (crustacean) - Wikipedia

@llewelly @inthehands @indigoparadox @futurebird Yes, "furriness" is definitely not a useful characteristic for classifying pancrustacea.

Most of the shared characteristics of pancrustacea (that distinguish them from others, like the arachnids, including spiders, mites, and scorpions) are neurological, developmental, and molecular and difficult to see with the better naked eye. In fact, properties of photoreceptors in the eye are one of these key characteristics.

@llewelly @inthehands @indigoparadox @futurebird But ultimately the thing that moved insects closer to crustaceans (and farther from other arthropods) was molecular data (e.g., patterns of genes that better clustered them with crustaceans than with the others).