Now that we've gotten down to just 16 competitors, I think it's time to replace the quick summaries I wrote when they were just 16 among 256. Like look at this.
Serpentes. This reptile suborder is made up of snakes
Serves its original purpose fine (we all know what snakes are, it tells you what Serpentes is), but it could certainly be better.
I'm calling on you all to write short propaganda blurbs boosting your favourite remaining animals. They should be impersonal (ie. not "I have a pet tardigrade and he's awesome", instead some neat facts about Tardigrades). They should also be in point form, so I can more easily combine them with other submissions. Pictures are okay but I will not be able to fit all of them.
The clades competing are as follows. In square brackets is the number of propaganda that been submitted so far. Bolded are the ones that I expect might not get enough propaganda.
The two biggest landslides among Chordates were Syngnathiformes (eg. seahorses) beating Beloniformes (flying fish) (67.83%, 331 to 157 votes), and Corvides beating Strisores (swifts nightjars hummingbirds) (70.38%, 213 to 506 votes).
The three closest matches were Serpentes (snakes) beating Columbiformes (doves) (52.81%, 311 to 348 votes), Chiroptera (bats) beating Caniformia (wolves bears otters seals) (51.61%, 689 to 646 votes), and Stomiiformes (deep-sea fish) beating Tetradontiformes (eg. pufferfish) (51.03%, 308 to 321 votes).
The third biggest "landslide" was Myliobatiformes (stingrays) beating Orectolobiformes (eg. whale sharks) (54.21%, 554 to 468 votes), which I couldn't in good conscience call a landslide.
The matches between invertibrates were also quite close.
The three biggest landslides were Polycladida (marine flatworms) beating Lingulida (61.2%, 254 to 161 votes), Eunicida (eg. Bobbit worm) beating Bonelliida (marine worms) (71.61%, 285 to 113 votes), and (the biggest landslide of the round by far) Octopoda beating Polyplacophora (81.74%, 82 to 367 votes).
The three closest matches were Nudipleura (sea slugs) beating Sacoglossa (solar-powered sea slug) (51.25%, 175 to 184 votes), Coleoptera (beetles) beating Hymenoptera (ants bees wasps) (50.76%, 931 to 903 votes), and Isopoda beating Xiphosura (horseshoe crab) (50.55%, 506 to 495 votes).
Chiroptera are the winning Mammals.
Urodela (salamanders) are the winning Amphibians.
Corvides are the winning Birds.
Serpentes are the winning Reptiles.
Myliobatiformes are the winning Cartilaginous fishes.
Coleoptera are the winning Insects.
Isopoda are the winning Crustaceans.
Articulata are the winning Echinoderms.
Eunicida are the winning Annelids.
Polycladida are the winning flatworms.
Nudipleura are the winning Gastropods.
Octopoda are the winning Cephalopods.
Coleoptera. This order is made up of beetles. It is the largest of all orders, containing 25% of all known animal species. Members include ladybugs, fireflies and hercules beetles
Hymenoptera. This order is made up of wasps, ants, and bees. Their mouthparts are adapted for chewing, or in many species have become a proboscis for sucking nectar.
Vote hymenoptera! Not just because honey is delicious, although that alone is already a great reason to vote for them.
Their biology is incredibly diverse.: from huge, social colonies with fascinating behaviors, over wasps with fascinating, alien looking shapes and colors, to some of the tiniest insects you can imagine.
They have fascinating methods for caring for their young: from spider hunting wasps, over wasps that deposit fungal spores into wood together with their eggs so that their larvae can eat the wood the fungi predigested, and wasps that can find larvae of other insects that are hidden deep in wood in order to inject their own eggs into them, to wasp larvae that produce chemicals that will make plants grow galls to cater to their needs.
Talking of chemicals: some of the peptids certain wasps produce are being researched as promising candidates as medicine against cancer.
Do you like flowers, and fruit (including figs)? Hymenoptera are really important pollinators.
Do you prefer your garden (and ecosystems in general) not to be overrun with insects that damage the plants? Wasps take care of that, both by hunting and through parasitoidism.
Do you like medieval manuscripts? The ink used to write those was made from galls that wasps created.
And all that is just a small part of why hymenoptera are so incredibly interesting!
So please vote hymenoptera because they are really fascinating, diverse and useful!
Coleoptera. This order is made up of beetles. It is the largest of all orders, containing 25% of all known animal species. Members include ladybugs, fireflies and hercules beetles
Hymenoptera. This order is made up of wasps, ants, and bees. Their mouthparts are adapted for chewing, or in many species have become a proboscis for sucking nectar.
To me beetles are the obvious winner for diving beetle reasons <33 My beautiful babes, deadly aquatic predators as larvae AND in adulthood!
But straight up, beetles have so many unique wins. Fireflies, rhinoceros beetles, weevils, so many beautifully coloured shiny and iridescent beetles, even the most famous band of all time was comprised of 100% Beatles! Have you ever held a click beetle on your palm and have it flick itself right side up? That’s the stuff.
Very evilly posting propaganda by @freakattack to support my point
I learned of a new beetle thanks to this, Austroplatypus incompertus! A long-living (up to 30 years) fertile "queen" creates a colony in a living eucalyptus tree, her daughters excavating and maintaining tunnels and caring for their symbiotic fungi food source! Very cool, very cool.
Coleoptera. This order is made up of beetles. It is the largest of all orders, containing 25% of all known animal species. Members include ladybugs, fireflies and hercules beetles
Hymenoptera. This order is made up of wasps, ants, and bees. Their mouthparts are adapted for chewing, or in many species have become a proboscis for sucking nectar.
For anyone who wants to see this matchup play out in the battlefield of academia, I actually saw a paper recently (apparently written by some aggressive Hymenoptera lovers) which challenges the factoid that beetles have the most species!
They cite the disproportionate attention naturalists have paid to beetles (not sorry ❤️) and reason that parasitoid wasps must be more numerous than we think:
"If parasitoid wasps are ubiquitous and most hosts are attacked by many different species, why is there any debate at all about the Hymenoptera being more diverse than other orders?"
(Forbes et al. 2018)
I find the passion in this paper very entertaining. They're even hesitant to admit that Coleoptera could be the second most speciose order. (And who do they nominate for that title instead? Diptera, of course. I'm willing to hand over the crown to Hymenoptera, but if you're telling me the flies also outnumber my precious beetles I'm gonna need a minute...)
Background We challenge the oft-repeated claim that the beetles (Coleoptera) are the most species-rich order of animals. Instead, we assert
Coleoptera. This order is made up of beetles. It is the largest of all orders, containing 25% of all known animal species. Members include ladybugs, fireflies and hercules beetles
Hymenoptera. This order is made up of wasps, ants, and bees. Their mouthparts are adapted for chewing, or in many species have become a proboscis for sucking nectar.
Flea beetles and teeny and eat plants. They can have pops of color or be shiny! Ground beetles help work decomposition, wood booring beetles eat dead and alive trees, and are often one of the main culprits in spreading fungal disease amoung trees, I don't know much about the last one, but I think it looks neat and is well adapted!
Tetraodontiformes. This order contains many fishses with unusual body structures, such as boxfishes, which are boxy as the implies, pufferfishes, which are round and able to inflate, and the ocean sunfish, the largest bony fish.
Stomiiformes. This order is made up of deep-sea fishes. It includes dragonfishes, loosejaws, viperfishes, and bristlemouths, the most populated family of vertebrates, with population numbering in the hundreds of trillions to quadrillions.
Strisores. This clade is made up of various small birds, such as swifts, hummingbirds, and nightjars.
Corvides. This sub-order is made up of corvids (jays, ravens, crows and magpies), as well as small meat-eating birds of the Old World, such as currawongs and butcherbirds
I can't emphasize how weird the whole Strisores tribe is. It somehow compacts all the weird taxa into one. Hummingbirds, swifts, nightjars, frogmouths, potoos.
Like this is a Strisores (pennant winged nightjar). Nightjars are nocturnal birds that like to rest on the floor or on tree branches.
Pennant-winged Nightjar from Gisenyi Rwanda, Gisenyi 00100, Rwanda on 11 August, 2015 at 06:31 AM by Laura Keene
This is also a Strisores (Berylline hummingbird). Hummingbirds famously feed on nectar, which is among the three main groups that do so (The others being sunbirds and honeyeaters. Please check out sunbirds, as I argue that they are even more awesome than hummingbirds.).
Berylline Hummingbird from Lomas del Valle, Zapopan, Jal., México on 04 May, 2024 at 08:01 AM by Juan
This is also a Strisores (Palawan frogmouth).
Palawan Frogmouth from 10.1723042,118.8840866 on 10 March, 2016 at 03:19 AM by abcdefgewing
This is also a Strisores (Alpine swift). Swifts almost spend their entire lives mid-air without landing. They even sleep mid-air.
Alpine Swift from Карабудахкентский р-н, Респ. Дагестан, Россия on 29 April, 2024 at 08:22 AM by egorbirder
And this is also a Strisores (Common potoo).
Common Potoo from Aquidauana - Mato Grosso do Sul, Brasilien on 01 May, 2024 at 12:57 PM by Lucas Leuzinger
Strisores is every birders' dream bird. I have personally seen 4(?) Strisores, and I love all of them. Out of the four (common swift, alpine swift, house swift, savanna nightjar), I like this one the most.
This dumb savanna nightjar just sits in the middle of the road, blocking our way. Yes, those are the shadows cast by the van's headlights.
And have you heard of what sounds do a Strisores make? Some sound more like normal birds (hummingbirds, swifts). Some sound like creepy owls (potoos, frogmouths). Some sound like an extremely loud insect (nightjars).
Obviously this will not be an easy win for Strisores, even if people actually know more about the clade. There are lots of cool Corvides (I'm sorry to say this, but Corvidae is among the most boring ones within Corvides. How do you compete against drongos, shrikes, monarch/paradise flycatchers, birds of paradise and orioles?). But I will fight until Corvides do not win in a landslide. My ideal scenario would be a 60:40 win for Corvides.
I like manta rays well enough, but I don't get how they're losing against the combined neatness of whale sharks and wobbegong sharks. Everyone knows what wobbegong sharks are, right?
Isopoda. This order is made up of isopods, including terrestrial species like the potato bug and aquatic species like the giant isopod. Some eat dead matter, others are filter feeders, and some are parasites, mostly of fish.
Xiphosura. This order is made up of horseshoe crabs, marine arthropods whose bodies are covered by a hard carapace. They mainly feed on worms and molluscs on the ocean floor. The blood of some species is harvested for LAL, which is used to detect and quantify bacterial toxins
Sacoglossa. This superorder is made up of solar-powered sea slugs, which ingest the insides of algae cells. This allows some of them to perform photosynthesis using stolen chloroplasts, the only animals to do so.
Nudipleura. This superorder is made up of sea slugs, which are typically colourful. Members include the sea bunny, variable neon slug, and blue dragon
Polycladida. This order is made up of free-living marine flatworms, including the pseudoceros
Lingulida. Brachiopods of this order have a long shell and a fleshy stalk with which it burrows into sand/mud. Includes Lingula, the oldest animal genus with species still alive today
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