Guardian Nature School Team Contact Blog Project Noah Facebook Project Noah Twitter

A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife

Join Project Noah!
nature school apple icon

Project Noah Nature School visit nature school

Spotting

Description:

Black and red-orange mussel in tide pools.

Habitat:

Spotted at La Jolla Shores during low tide.

Species ID Suggestions



Sign in to suggest organism ID

3 Comments

Scott Frazier
Scott Frazier 12 years ago

Well a very (!) general way to pick out arthropods is any invertebrate (animal without a backbone) that has (hard) segmented (or jointed) legs, at least at some stage, usually when they are mature. There are certainly exceptions but that helps picks up most arthropods we're going to see here. So an octopus has legs but they are not hard and they don't have joints so it is NOT an arthropod. But a soft caterpillar IS an arthropod because when it matures as a butterfly it has hard, segmented legs. Again, this is only a very general way to distinguish most arthropods. "Other" organisms include worms, clams, snails, echinoderms (starfish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, brittle stars, etc) various micro-organisms, and many "others" ;-)

CoralAvery
CoralAvery 12 years ago

Thanks Frazier, I'm getting very confused with all these sea creatures.

Scott Frazier
Scott Frazier 12 years ago

Hello. The crab partially visible in the first photo is indeed an arthropod but the mussels (and barnacles) in the series belongs to the molluscs, so in the case of Noah spottings, to "other" organisms. Cheers

CoralAvery
Spotted by
CoralAvery

San Diego, California, USA

Spotted on Nov 21, 2011
Submitted on Nov 27, 2011

Nearby Spottings

Closed Sea Anemone - Starburst Anemone Willet Young Striped Shore Crab Spotting
Noah Guardians
Noah Sponsors
join Project Noah Team

Join the Project Noah Team