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| Paroster macrosturtensis, linocut print, 8" x 8" by Ele Willoughby, 2024 |
The other two #InsertAnInvert2024 prompts were troglofauna or cave fauna and stygofauna or subterranean but aquatic fauna.
This is a hand-printed of the Paroster macrosturtensis beetle, a blind predatory subterranean diving water beetle from the calcrete aquifers of the Western Australian desert. Trapped underground for million of years as the calcrete caves formed these beetles have evolved to no longer have eyes. It is printed on 8" x 8" Japanese paper.
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| Neoniphargidae, 8" x 8" linocut print by Ele Willoughby, 2024 |
This is a hard-carved and hand-printed linocut print of a little semi-transparent, white amphipod crustacean in the Neoniphargidae group from the Pilbara. This is a large, dry, sparsely populated region in northern part of Western Australia which is a global biodiversity hotspot for subterranean fauna including aquatic animals that live in groundwater called stygofauna like this. Stygofauna can live in subterranean caves but most commonly live in alluvial, karstic or fractured rock aquifers within pore space and fractures in the rock. In the absence of light, stygofauna lack eyes and pigmentation. Stygofauna have evolved and survived over millions of years in the ecologically important Pilbara groundwater environment.
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