User:AshLin/DYKDraft4

Liropus minusculus' is a species of ..

• Skeleton Shrimp: A See-through Crustacean (Top 10 New Species of 2014).

This tiny shrimp, the smallest in the genus, was identified from among specimens originally collected from a cave on that island of romance, sunny Santa Catalina, off the coast of Southern California. Part of a marine family known as skeleton shrimp, only distantly related to the ones some humans love to dip in cocktail sauce, this crustacean is the first of its genus to be reported in the northeastern Pacific. The new species has an eerie, translucent appearance that makes it resemble a bony structure. The male's body measures just 3.3 millimeters (about an eighth of an inch); the female is even smaller at 2.1 (less than a tenth of an inch).

Reference

• Guerra-Garcia & Hendryks (2013). A new species of Liropus (Crustacea, Amphipoda, Caprellidae) from California, USA, with an illustrated key of the genus. Zootaxa

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a giant two-inch-long (five centimeters) single-celled organism (protist) called an agglutinated foraminifer (Spiculosiphon oceana), which welds its own skeleton together using organic glue and discarded silica sponge spicules—glassy sponge-skeleton components shaped like needles. When it's done, it looks remarkably like a carnivorous sponge. And it behaves like a carnivorous sponge too: It impales plankton on its pointy home and squeezes part of its body through gaps in its armor to feed on them.