ABSTRACT
The photo, “Arthropod Reef,” is meant to remind the reader of the cirriped paradox. Arthropods — whether trilobites or ghost shrimps burrowing in the sediment, walking lobsters, bugs and millipeds, swimming shrimp and water fleas, or flying mosquitoes and butterflies — stand for high mobility in every conceivable kind of environment. A segmented exoskeleton of light chitin, coating the body and the articulated appendages (but also the respiratory tracheae and parts of the intestinal walls), was the material base of this unique diversification. The growth problems associated with such a skeleton have been solved by molting or (in insects) by metamorphosis.
