Talitrus saltator is a small amphipod that manages exceptional jumps for an animal of its size (about the width of your thumb). Time precludes putting my whole Talitrus saltator project up as yet. It is scanned and put through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to save re-typing it all. However, it has yet to be proof read (and there are lots of OCR errors)
In the mean time, here are some of the more interesting illustrations of Talitrus and parts of Talitrus. All are copyright Bob Kirby, but may be re-used under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence
Fig 1. Stages in the jump of Talitrus
Fig 2. Exoskeletal hinging (showing progressive adaptation)
Fig 3. Reinforced exoskeletal hinge. This is the one that takes the main
shock of the 'tail' thumping against the ground. It is also the one about
which most of the rotaion occurs.
Fig 4. Abdominal cross section
Fig 5. Musculature of the abdomen. This diagram was built up from
observations confirmed by microscopic examination of dozens of stained
thin sections from a recently moulted individual.
Fig 9. Landing orientation related to take off orientation. I have read
claims that say that the landing orientation is random. Judge for
yourself.
Fig 14. The articulatory surface
Page maintained by Bob Kirby (Last Updated 5 Mar 2021)