Porcellio echinatus is a species of Woodlouse known from the southern Iberian peninsula and northern Africa.
Similar species: Brood Pouch Crustaceans
By RMFelix
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Uploaded Jun 18, 2019. Captured May 24, 2019 16:37.
comments (5)
Amazing sculpture on head and dorsal plates ... do you have a better close up of the head area? Just because I think it would be fantastic to document that in detail...
I can't give you an ID from the top of my head. Woodlice have their origin in the Mediterranean and as a result there are hundreds of species there, some of them probably still undescribed too. My documentation for the Iberian peninsula is "patchy" at best. To my knowledge there has never been a comprehensive publication, so all needs to be distilled from (sometimes very old) seperata. Last time I've sat down with that is some ten years ago, so I will need to find some time to pick up the pieces and give at new go. Not in the coming weeks I'm afraid :-/
Quite sure this is a Porcellionidae, probably even Porcellio (but given the awesome sculpture someone may well have cooked up a separate genus for it too). Posted 6 years ago
Although I should stress that I cannot totally exclude the possibility of a lookalike that I have no information on (yet), I'm fairly convinced that this species is so conspicuously "different" that I've decided to take it as an ID for now.
Here is the original description by Lucas:
There are only very few photos of this species on the internet (some on biodiv.virtual) and those are more evenly gray, but the clear margins do fit the original description.
Your specimen should be a female, based on the smaller central lobe (cf. the drawings by Lucas)
P.S. There should be more info and figures in this publication (that I don't have):
Vandel, A. (1946) Crustacés isopodes terrestres (Oniscoïdea) épigés et cavernicoles du Portugal. – Anaïs da Faculdade de Ciências do Porto, vol.30, pp.135-427.
Posted 6 years ago, modified 6 years ago