More Invertebrate Prints

 

Motyxia sequoia, linocut, 8" x 8" by Ele Willoughby, 2024

Motyxia are blind, bioluminescent, cyanide-producing millipedes known as Sierra luminous millipedes  from the southern Sierra Nevada, Tehachapi, and Santa Monica mountain ranges of California. I made this print for #InsertAnInvert2024 prompt "eyeless." My hand-printed linocut is printed in both regular and glow-in-the-dark ink so like Motyxia sequoia itself, the prints glow-in-the dark! Each print is on 8" x 8" cream coloured Japanese washi paper with bark inclusions.

Motyxia sequoia, glowing in the dark, linocut 8" x 8" by Ele Willoughby, 2024

These millipedes grow to 3 to 4 cm in length, 4.5 to 8 mm wide, with 20 body segments, excluding the head. Like other polydesmidans ("flat-backed" millipedes) they lack eyes and have prominent paranota (lateral keels). They are typically tan to orange-pink in colour with a dark mid-dorsal line;  they are fluorescent under black light and bioluminescent.

Diving Beetle Paroster pallescens, linocut, 8" x 8" by Ele Willoughby, 2024

This is a hand-printed of the Paroster pallescens beetle, surface diving water beetle from Australia. It is printed on 8" x 8" Japanese paper. I made this print for the #InsertAnInvert2024 prompt diver.

I decided I should finally make an actual edition of my fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.

Drosophila melanogaster, 9" x 12" linocut by Ele Willoughby, 2024

This linocut print highlights the model organism Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly or vinegar fly. A hind-printed ring with 5 of the different eye colour genetic mutations appear on lovely handmade Japanese washi paper with flecks of bark inclusions. Each print is 9" by 12" (22.9 cm by 30.4 cm).

A species of fly (the taxonomic order Diptera) in the family Drosophilidae, D. melanogaster is used as a model organism for biological research in genetics, physiology, microbial pathogenesis, and life history evolution.  It breads quickly, has only four pairs of chromosomes, and is easy to raise in the lab anywhere in the world. It's also a well-known pest in kitchens worldwide!

More Troglofauna and Stygofauna

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.

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.