Jun 1, 2020
Just wanted to share a cute amphipod I measured today. This is Apolochus barnardi, which sometimes shows up in the eelgrass beds of Bodega Harbor. Most of the amphipods in the eelgrass are herbivores or detritivores, but these are members of a family mostly thought to be parasitic and/or commensal inside larger animals, and it’s a total mystery to me what they’re doing in the grass. I’ve never seen one alive and that makes me sad because 1) it’s super cute when it’s dead so it’s probably adorable when it’s bumbling around in the grass and 2) members of this family are usually pretty colors that fade quickly in alcohol.