Terrestrial Isopods, Woodlice, Pillbugs and Bally Bugs
I paid little attention to Bally Bugs, terrestrial Isopods, until I went on sabbatical to Linz Austria to study American Lobster cuticle in the lab of Sabine Hild at JKU Polymer Science Institute. The first thing we did after I arrived was go to Ulm Germany to a meeting of a group from Dusseldorf, Ulm and Linz working on Crustaceans. There I met Andreas Ziegler working on a variety of Isopods including some Woodlouse species, particularly on the storage of CaCO3 for cuticle construction. On coming back to the USA he asked that I look into finding a particular Isopod that lived in the USA Northwest coast under seaweed layered on ocean shoreline rocks. That lead to locating and imaging the Oregon Marine Pillbug https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/16378390 , which I did using my brother's hunting ability and his living in Seattle WA to find and photograph this Marine Pillbug.
Subsequently I have become more interested to learn the IDs of the woodlice in my own locale in Maine.
I found out that the three species of woodlice that I found in my yard associated with rotting wood are invasive species, the Common Shiny Woodlouse, The Common Rough Woodlouse and the Common Pill Woodlouse. Even the Common Sea Slater, https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/16222338 , which is a coastal high tide rock denizen photographed by me in Downeast Maine, is an invasive species. Lesson: many common things are invasive due to not having their traditional natural enemies around.
These Isopod species are all of interest given their demonstrated storage and utilization of CaCO3 for cuticle construction. You can see some indications of that storage in superficial images of their cuticle surface. I will be checking that out using analytical approaches.
