Invertebrates: The Marvelous Majority
by Howard Youth

While everyone is familiar with butterflies and moths, these diverse insects constitute just a small fraction of invertebrate species. Invertebrates are the most abundant creatures on earth, crawling, flying, floating, or swimming in virtually all of earth's habitats, from townhouses to tropical rainforests. Yet most of us rarely notice them unless they're in our gardens or on our dinner plates.

Invertebrates--the many creatures without backbones--are nature's unsung heroes, quietly playing vital roles in earth's ecosystems. Swarms of krill feed whales and people, coral reefs provide homes for a quarter of all marine fish species, and tiny wasps and other predators stalk some of our most formidable pests, and control others so effectively that they never reach pest status. Invertebrates can also be among humanity's worst enemies. Locusts, corn borers, and other agricultural pests cause billions of dollars in crop damage each year, and some of the world's most deadly diseases are transmitted through some invertebrate species. Yet invertebrates also inspire us, and appear widely as subjects in our art and literature, having wormed their way into the hearts of some of the world's most accomplished writers and thinkers. Some examples of invertebrates in literature punctuate this article.

All told, perhaps 99 percent of all known living species are invertebrates. Vertebrates--fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals--make up but a tiny fraction of life on earth. You need not go farther than the National Zoo's Invertebrate Exhibit to encounter some of the world's most striking invertebrates. In fact, about a quarter of the animals featured in this issue reside there. This issue provides a small glimpse at the astounding and diverse world of invertebrates, but once you've been bitten by the invertebrate "bug," you'll notice many more creatures all around you. All you need to do is start looking.

JELLYFISH

Jellyfish tend to drift with currents. However, many deliberately move by pulsing their cap-like bodies. Most jellyfish catch prey by stinging, paralyzing anything that gets tangled in their tentacles. Each year, jellyfish migrate up the Chesapeake, reaching the farthest north in years of high salinity, when scanty rain fails to flush out rivers flowing into the Bay. These familiar jellyfish, called sea nettles, grow to only about 18 inches long. The largest jellyfish, fortunately, never strays into the Bay. The largest specimen, a giant jellyfish native to cold northern seas, was recorded to be 120 feet long, with a cap, or medusa, measuring more than seven feet wide. Most jellyfish are more than 95 percent water, while we humans have a water content of only 65 percent.

TOMATO CLOWNFISH AND ANEMONES

The tomato clownfish of the South Pacific can flaunt its vivid color thanks to its anemone protector's stinging tentacles, which deter predators. The clownfish is not harmed by the anemone because it secretes a chemical that keeps the anemone's stinging cells from firing. While being caressed by its guardian's tentacles, the clownfish serves its host by constantly removing debris. Other fish-invertebrate partnerships have been discovered by marine biologists and divers, including juvenile jack fish that live amid the tentacles of jellyfish, pipefish that weave their way through the wavy polyps of stinging mushroom coral, and pearlfishes that shelter inside sea cucumbers' body cavities.

CORAL

"My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red"
--William Shakespeare, Sonnet 130

HARD CORAL

The hard corals are tiny colonial animals with bone-hard exoskeletons. Many generations of corals, layered one atop the other, form reefs, which often provide oases for species that could not otherwise survive in nutrient-poor tropical waters. Hard corals thrive in warm, shallow, clear waters, providing a substrate for anemones, soft corals, and other invertebrates, which in turn draw small fish and their large predators. This undersea bounty also draws human attention. An estimated 10 percent of reefs have been destroyed due to coral mining for building materials, overfishing, tourism (damage by boat anchors and trampling snorkelers), and pollution. Australia's Great Barrier Reef, which stretches for more than 1,200 miles, forms the longest string of reefs in the world.

TERMITES

The huge mounds build by some tropical termites have a profound effect on the landscape. For example, some Tanzanian villagers built a lookout post on top of a termite mound so they could spot crop-raiding baboons. A variety of wildlife, including striped and dwarf mongooses, monitor lizards, and many birds, burrow into and live in the empty chambers in the mounds. Meanwhile, inside the nest, thousands of workers carry bits of grass from the surrounding savanna to serve as compost for the extensive fungus gardens that provide food for the colony.

SILK AND GYPSY MOTHS

The silkworm is the only completely domesticated insect, and has been raised by humans for more than 4,000 years. Silkworms' cocoons are unwound to gather the precious threading, which is woven into fabric. In the late 1800s, during a time when the silk industry was hard-hit by an epidemic, Etienne Leopold Trauvelot, a French scientist living in Massachusetts, tried to come up with disease-resistant moths that spun fine silk. He imported gypsy moths from France, and some escaped while he tested their viability for the market. This experiment resulted in the plague of oak-munching caterpillars we still battle today, while silkworms remain uncontested as the finest silk spinners.

PEARLS

The treasured pearl is really a shellfish's effort to protect itself from a parasite or intruding particle. Pearl owners, then, wear this invader, which after becoming wedged between the oyster's shell and "skin" (mantle) was repeatedly covered with a pearly coating that protects the oyster's soft body. Most valuable pearls come from marine oysters, though many other species produce them. Oysters are often "cultured": people push bits of shell into the molluscs' mantles. The pearls are harvested more than five years later. Because moisture is captured between their pearly layers, pearls are susceptible to drying and cracking if not regularly worn close to moist skin.

DEER COWRIE

Shallow waters off Florida and the West Indies are home to the beautiful deer cowrie. Cowries are molluscs that occur mostly in the tropics, where their smooth, shiny shells are prized as ornaments, jewelry, money, or as a surface for carving. Pacific island royalty, for instance, wore the shells of the golden cowrie on their robes, and tribes in Africa and other tropical regions used shells of the money cowrie as currency. A live cowrie's skin-like mantle periodically extrudes and wraps around the animal's hard shell, keeping it clean while causing growth by depositing successive layers of calcium carbonate.

SHELL COLLECTING

Shells of more than 1,000 mollusc species can wash up on Atlantic shores, from the Caribbean to Canada. While most people may pick up a pretty shell they happen to find at the beach, there is a hard-core and growing group of shell collectors who scour beaches for new specimens to add to their well-documented collections. At least 30 well-established shell clubs, made up of both malacologists (those who study molluscs professionally) and amateurs, hold meetings in different parts of the U.S.

SHELL OIL

One of the world's most successful businesses has always benefited from the shell. In 1830, Marcus Samuel began a trading business in London. As part of his business, Samuel imported polished sea shells from Asia, and sold screens, boxes, and other items decorated with them. When the family later became involved in the petroleum business and Marcus Samuel's sons founded a new company, they chose a shell as their symbol for sentimental reasons. In 1904, the nondescript shell they chose was changed to the scallop that is still used today to represent the Shell Oil Company.

OCTOPUS

"Adopt the character of the twisting octopus, which takes on the appearance of the nearby rock. Now follow in this direction, now turn a different hue." --Theognis, c. 545 B.C.

OCTOPUS EGGS

Cephalopods--the group of molluscs that includes octopus, squid, cuttlefish, and nautilus--have hunted the oceans for about 500 million years, evolving into what many experts believe are the most advanced invertebrates. Octopus species (and their cuttlefish relatives) are best known for their color-change abilities and complex behavior. A female octopus will vigilantly guard, clean, and aerate her eggs, which she cements to a hard surface. Once the eggs hatch, tiny free-swimming juvenile octopuses drift through the water. Many are immediately snapped up by fish and other predators. The mother dies soon after the eggs hatch, leaving her surviving young to carry on alone. Octopuses rarely live longer than several years.

CUTTLEFISH

An unsuspecting shrimp is locked on target by a cuttlefish at the Zoo's Invertebrate Exhibit. Two of the cuttlefish's ten arms are modified graspers that shoot out at small prey. In a blink, the shrimp will be grabbed and pulled in to be devoured. Like their relatives the octopuses, cuttlefish are quick-change artists, flashing different colors either for camouflage or for communication with others of their kind. The hard, gas-filled shell of the cuttlefish, long used as "cuttlebones" for parakeets to chew on for calcium, may regulate the cephalopods' buoyancy. Cuttlefish are prized in Asia as a delicacy, as much as squid are relished in Italian cuisine, and their ink, known as sepia (Sepia is also the genus name for the most familiar cuttlefish), is used by artists.

CRAYFISH

Crayfish are small freshwater cousins of lobsters. Turn over stones in almost any local stream and you should find one. These crustaceans scavenge dead plant and animal matter, and also ambush small fish. When threatened, a crayfish quickly contracts its abdominal muscles, and propels itself backward, away from danger. Crayfish can migrate over land for short distances to move from one stream or pond to the next. The meaty tail muscles are widely eaten, and crayfish is commonly harvested as a second crop in the wet rice fields of Louisiana and east Texas.

BUGS AS FOOD

For some reason, when it comes to dining on invertebrates, Americans and Europeans focus mostly on those that dwell in the oceans. In our cuisines there are many uses for clams, oysters, mussels, scallops, lobsters, crab, shrimp, and squid. True, the French relish land snails, but what about the many insects we regularly see? Why not grubs, crickets, or katydids? People in other parts of the world dine on invertebrates often unfamiliar to most of our palettes. For instance, Thai vendors sell giant water bugs, which buyers will pulverize into a paste used as a condiment for rice and vegetable dishes.

LICHEN KATYDID

Many katydids resemble the leaves they eat. Others have even more complex camouflage, like the lichen katydid, which blends remarkably well with the stringy lichens common in its cloudforest home in Central America. Katydids are active and noisy mainly at night. They are named after an imitation of the call of a widespread species. Katydids are also called longhorn grasshoppers, a name that reflects their close relation and resemblance to grasshoppers and crickets.

BUG

"Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt, that stinks and sings."
--Alexander Pope, Epistle to the Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer

STINK BUGS

Gaudy bugs are more than obvious to prospective predators, which would likely find them unpleasant, or dangerous, to eat. Because of offensive fluids issuing from the spots on the pentatomids' backs, they are called "stink bugs." Clumping intensifies these brightly colored insects' warning--one bug makes a stink, but many bugs make a big stink! The clump shown here includes various immature stages, which began clumping as soon as they hatched from a batch of eggs. The adults have wings and can fly when disturbed.

WORM

"I would not enter on my list of friends
(Th'o grac'd with polish'd manners and fine sense,
(Yet wanting sensibility) the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm."
--William Cowper, Tirocinium

TROPICAL FLATWORM

Although many flatworms (planarians) live in water, some ooze their way over damp land habitats, constantly changing shape. They feed by pressing small creatures between their slimy skin and the ground, then sucking parts of their prey up through a tube-like apparatus that feeds into the mouth, which is located in the middle of the planarian's underside. The bright color of some species suggests that they are advertising themselves as unpleasant to eat.

FEATHERDUSTER WORM

Tethered to rock or another substrate, the hard stalk of the featherduster worm provides a tough sheath from which the soft-bodied worm can extend its feathery tentacles, which are used for both respiration and feeding on passing particles.

CRABS WITH ANEMONES

Marine crabs and anemones often benefit from symbiotic, or mutually beneficial, relationships. The stinging arms of an anemone, a member of the phylum Cnidaria (which also includes corals and jellyfish), sometimes protect the sponge crab from octopuses and other predators. In some cases, a crab brandishes an anemone on its claw. The crab usually attaches to an anemone after prodding it from its perch on rock or coral. While the crab derives protection from the anemone, the anemone feasts on a bounty of scraps that drift over the crab's back as it tears up its meals.

HORSESHOE CRABS

Each May, thousands of horseshoe crabs haul onto Atlantic coast beaches to lay their eggs. Males tag along behind the females, depositing sperm on the thousands of eggs each female lays. In turn, thousands of migrating shorebirds and gulls descend upon the mating couples to gorge on the bounty of fresh eggs. Horseshoe crabs are not true crabs, but spider and scorpion relatives. They have remained virtually identical in appearance and size to ancestors that swam in shallow waters 400 million years ago. These odd animals often swim upside-down. When they get stuck upside down in shallow water or on land, they flip themselves over with their dagger-like tails. Medical researchers use the animals' lysate, a fluid from their broken blood cells, to test for the presence of bacteria and other contaminants in pharmaceutical products.

CRAB

"I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floor of silent seas."
--T.S. Eliot, Macavity: The Mystery Cat

BLUE CRAB

Think of the Chesapeake Bay, and visions of steaming crab cakes may come to mind. About half of the United States' catch of blue crabs comes from the Chesapeake. For blue crab lovers, however, the news is sad these days. Since 1990, blue crab populations have dropped almost 35 percent, and, on the Potomac, numbers fell by about 33 percent between 1994 and 1995. Following recent crashes in oyster and fish catches, many fishermen have turned full attention to blue crabs, which breed near the mouth of the Bay, but migrate north seasonally. Scientists too have focused on crabs, monitoring their movements in and around the Bay. Virginia and Maryland have revised harvest regulations to protect the dwindling populations of this crustacean. Blue crabs are found in salty and brackish waters from Canada south to Argentina.

ENDANGERED INVERTEBRATES

Although the most plentiful creatures on earth are invertebrates, not all species of spineless creatures are abundant. In fact, some are endangered. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service lists 105 U.S. species and subspecies of snails, clams, crustaceans, insects, and arachnids as endangered, and 25 more as threatened. Many are threatened by habitat destruction, including the California freshwater shrimp, a small crustacean that has declined after streamside vegetation was removed by livestock grazing and erosion clouded the stream waters in which it lives. School children have been instrumental in trying to save this species, raising money and public awareness, and working with farmers to replant some of the native plants lost from the shrimps' remaining hideaways.

50-MILLION-YEAR-OLD CRICKET

Fifty million years ago, vast areas of what is now Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming were covered in low, green vegetation and huge lakes. A wide variety of creatures, from primitive crocodiles to rhinoceroses, inhabited the area, and have been described from fossils, known as the Green River shales. Plenty of insects have also turned up in the shales, and many, including a fossilized cricket, closely resemble those living today.

TRILOBITES

Long before the dinosaurs, trilobites roamed the seas in abundance. Today they exist only in books and as fossils. These sea scavengers probably sought out dead or stationary plant and animal matter. Around 10,000 trilobite species have been described from fossils. Their demise likely followed the rise of predatory animals like cephalopods and fish. Fossilized trilobites shows how these prehistoric arthropods got their name, which means "three lobes." Two ridges divide the body into three lengthwise sections.

AMBER

Insects and plants entombed in golden amber--a fossil tree resin--provide scientists with glimpses of small organisms that lived millions of years ago. Gem collectors also prize pieces of this substance. Although found in many parts of the world, the most significant amber deposits have been unearthed around the Baltic Sea, in 40- to 60-million-year-old sands.

DRAGONFLY

"Deep in the sun-searched sky growths the dragon-fly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:
So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
When twofold silence was the song of love."
--Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Choice

DRAGONFLIES

A dragonfly is one of many animals Pueblo Indians etched into the basalt boulders in and around what is now Petroglyph National Monument in New Mexico. Dragonflies have long been prominent flying insects--in fact, they appeared well before dinosaurs. Giant dragonflies--the largest insects ever known--swooped over marshes 250 million years ago. Some species, like one represented by a life-sized model at the Invertebrate Exhibit, had wingspreads of about 28 inches.

SEA LILIES

Sea lilies, like most echinoderms--a phylum of spiny-skinned marine animals--at first sight defy our perception of what is animal. Sea lilies thrived in ancient seas, such as the waters that once covered Iowa and Indiana. Today, however, the few species that still survive are found only in deep water. Sea lilies superficially resemble flowers: They spend their lives attached to a fixed location by a longish stalk, their petal-like arms waving in the current, gleaning food particles from the water and drawing them back toward the animal's mouth. Other echinoderms, including urchins, sea cucumbers, and sea stars, are common in shallow coastal waters as well as deep seas.

SEA STARS

Sea stars scavenge, usually in shallow waters, and hunt slow-moving or stationary animals like clams and oysters. The sunflower star from the Pacific coast is one of about 2,000 sea star (or starfish) species. Sunflower stars can grow more than 20 arms and reach two feet in length. Some sea stars feed on clams and other bivalves, grasping them with sucker-studded tube feet and prying their shells open. Once a sea star has pried the bivalve's shell open just enough, it extrudes its stomach within the hapless animal's shell and digests the victim's insides.

SEA URCHINS

Cloaked in spikes set into large, hardened plates, sea urchins look more like medieval weapons than marine animals. Despite their armor, they fall prey to sea stars and other predators. The urchin's armor, called a test, encloses and protects the animal's soft organs, including the large gonads, which people in many parts of the world eat as a delicacy. Urchin populations can be both explosive and implosive, with wild fluctuations in numbers sometimes telling of environmental imbalance. For instance, there have been dramatic rises in urchin numbers following overhunting of lobsters and sea otters, two urchin predators. Conversely, die-offs sometimes occur, possibly due to environmental changes that may leave urchins more vulnerable to disease.

INVERTEBRATES IN LITERATURE

Invertebrates have inspired many writers through the years and have been featured in many works, some fantastic, others dreary. Franz Kafka's stirring Metamorphosis describes a young man's inner strife, illustrated through his transformation into an insect that falls and lies helpless on its back. Charlotte's Web's heroine, a barn spider, saves a talented pig from slaughter by writing messages in her web. Another web-slinging hero, Spiderman snuffs out crime in the big city. In the children's book Newberry: The Life and Times of a Maine Clam, a clam with a neck ache dons a purple scarf and sets off on a wild adventure that highlights the real plight of clams and the dangers they face, from predation by gulls and starfish to pollution.

BEETLE

"Dar'st thou die?
The sense of death is most in apprehension,
And the poor beetle, that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies."
--William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

BEETLES

The order Coleoptera, insects better known as beetles, constitutes a third of all known insect species (about 300,000 in all).

ANT

"The ant's a centaur in his dragon world." --Ezra Pound, Homage to Sextus Prospertius

BULLDOG ANTS

As few as 30 stings from Australia's venomous bulldog ant can kill a human. The sting of just one of these large ants hurts at least as much as a wasp sting. Bulldog ants aggressively defend their ground nests, and reportedly will scurry and jump toward intruders.

HUMAN BODY LICE

People infested with body lice often feel "lousy"--itchy, tired, and irritable. With their hooked tarsi, these tiny insects grasp hairs and fibers, upon which they attach eggs, called nits. Occasionally, they crawl down to skin level to suck blood. Some speculate that body lice thrived on early, hairy humans, but over time, as our bodies became less hairy, the animals switched habitats, residing on our fur coats and other clothing instead. Head lice however, stick close to our scalps. School children sometimes catch these head specialists from playmates, and during World War I lice were a common pest in the trenches, where troops called them "cooties." Special shampoos and combs effectively rid scalps of these unwanted visitors and their eggs. In extremely crowded conditions, in refugee camps for instance, body lice can transmit diseases such as typhus.

MOSQUITOES AND DISEASE

Each year, about two million people die of malaria, a disease transmitted into the bloodstream by female Anopheles mosquitoes, which cannot produce eggs without blood. Malaria was once much more widespread, even occurring as far north as Russia and the northeastern U.S. Changes in drainage and construction techniques (including screening windows), and effective treatment of cases, helped eradicate the disease in many areas. Other diseases spread by mosquitoes include yellow fever and dengue fever, which are spread by mosquitoes in the genus Aedes.

PERIODICAL CICADAS

Every 13 or 17 years, depending on the species, periodical cicadas emerge from the ground for a few weeks of mating and egg-laying. Eggs are laid in slits cut into tree branches by adult females, using the rough ovipositors on the tips of their abdomens. Hatched nymphs dig underground and spend years slowly growing on a diet of tree-root sap until it is time to emerge and transform into adults. Unlike the greenish annual cicada heard and seen every summer, periodical cicadas have red eyes, black bodies, and gold-margined wings. Though our area has several cyclical populations of 17-year periodical cicadas, the next "boom," when large numbers of cicadas will appear, is likely around the year 2004.

CICADA KILLERS

Although the female cicada killer, a kind of wasp, feeds on nectar, she paralyzes cicadas in order to provision her ground nest, where her larvae will feed on the helpless insects. Adult cicada killers are harmless to humans, and are active throughout North America during summer months. Unlike their more aggressive relatives, the yellow jackets, these wasps are not colonial. Usually two females excavate and share an underground burrow.

GIANT HORNET CLOSEUP

At very close range, the giant hornet appears as bizarre and beautiful as any science fiction creation. Three simple eyes, which are sensitive to light, can be seen toward the top of the head, while thousands of facets make up the two black, image-producing compound eyes. The hornet chews up other insects with its strong mandibles.

COBWEBS

"Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through."--Jonathan Swift, A Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind

INSECTS AND CULTURE

Insects are the world's most diverse group of animals, totalling about 930,000 described species, and many new species continue to be found as scientists study both local and remote areas more thoroughly. (Compare that with the approximately 4,600 described mammal and 9,600 bird species.) Humans have both revered and loathed these ubiquitous animals, and today they feature prominently in many areas of our culture, including sports. Though many teams have chosen large animals to signify prowess and power, some, such as the Charlotte Hornets professional basketball team, are named after insects.

WOOD-BORING WASP

Using her sensitive antennae, a female European ichneumon wasp detects an insect larva boring into a pine log. She slowly drills her long ovipositor into the wood with a saw-like action of the serrated tip and deposits her eggs. When the wasp's eggs hatch, they will feed on the insect larva.

MANTISES

The predatory mantises are often lauded as beneficial pest hunters, but in truth they are indiscriminate killers. These sit-and-wait predators are usually colored to match their leafy or twiggy surroundings, and lash out with their barbed forelegs at passing prey. Occasionally, females attack and feed on their mates, and both sexes kill beneficial as well as harmful insects, along with a variety of other small creatures--even, rarely, hummingbirds.

CENTIPEDES

In spite of the meaning of their name ("hundred feet"), some centipedes have more than a hundred legs, some fewer. Unlike the sluggish millipedes, which mostly eat decaying vegetation, centipedes are fast-moving hunters, armed with biting, poison "jaws" that are actually modified legs. During its fast-paced life, a centipede may lose some legs either chasing prey or avoiding predators. Lost legs are replaced during periodic molts.

SCORPIONS

"My father has chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions."
--1 Kings, 12:11

SCORPIONS

Scorpions give birth to live young, which clamber onto their mother's back, sharing the insects and other small animals she kills until they can fend for themselves. Most scorpions are capable of painful stings, though few are deadly to humans. Their crab-like claws grasp prey, while the their stingers do the killing. Once a meal is secured, a tiny pair of claws by the scorpion's mouth tears food into smaller pieces. In North America, scorpions are most common in desert areas, where they are hunted by bats, owls, and other predators.

GOLIATH BIRD-EATING SPIDER

The world's largest spider, the goliath bird-eating spider crawls in South American rainforests, seeking insects, lizards, small snakes, and birds. This giant's leg span reaches a maximum of ten inches. Bird-eating spiders and other tarantulas form a group of large, hairy night hunters that use talon-like fangs to grasp prey. Most species have a "venom" used for digesting food, but this substance usually causes only minor irritation in humans bitten by these shy invertebrates.

JUMPING SPIDERS

Jumping spiders feed on insects they capture not in a web, but by ambush. Jumping spiders, with about 4,000 species, make up the world's largest family of spiders. Their unusually large eyes enable them to sight prey and pounce. Many species are found in temperate areas, including Washington, D.C.

SPIDER WEB

"Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue." --Henry James, Prefaces

SPIDER SIZE AND MATING

In many spider species, females are much larger than males. The greatest size difference occurs in the genus Nephila. Females of some species can weigh more than a thousand times as much as males, a size difference the male uses to his advantage when it comes time for mating. A male's tiny size draws little interest from the beefy female, which targets larger prey, so the male can wander near her and mate with impunity, while males in other genera must use various tactics near their ever-vigilant prospective mates to avoid becoming a meal.

(ZooGoer 25(2) 1996. Copyright 1996 Howard Youth. All rights reserved.)



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