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Woodlouse
Armadillidium vulgare
39.4636, -8.47166
Field Notes
Description:
A woodlouse (known by many common names: see below; plural woodlice) is a crustacean with a rigid, segmented, long exoskeleton and fourteen jointed limbs. Woodlice form the suborder Oniscidea within the order Isopoda, with over 5,000 known species.
Woodlice in the genus Armadillidium can roll up into an almost perfect sphere as a defensive mechanism, hence some of the common names such as pill bug or roly-poly. Most woodlice, however, cannot do this
Habitat:
Though today found worldwide, woodlouse populations in the Americas arrived from Europe by sea alongside humans.
Living in a terrestrial environment, woodlice breathe through trachea-like lungs in their paddle-shaped hind legs (pleopods), called pleopodal lungs. Woodlice need moisture because they rapidly lose water by excretion and through their cuticle, and so are usually found in damp, dark places, such as under rocks and logs, although one species, Hemilepistus reaumuri, inhabits "the driest habitat conquered by any species of crustacean".They are usually nocturnal and are detritivores, feeding mostly on dead plant matter.
Notes:
Spotted under one of my vases in the garden.
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