A mega arthropod zoo

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Pycnogonid

Well-Known Member
Imagine a zoo that could house every known extant arthropod species. How would it go? How expensive or difficult would it be?
 
With over a million species of known arthropods, it would be both expensive and difficult.

I like the idea though.
 
bongorob said:
With over a million species of known arthropods, it would be both expensive and difficult.

I like the idea though.
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Well, a very large portion of the species would be ambient and self sustaining, so that should cut down the cost by a significant portion.
 
It would be extremely difficult (in reality, impossible) and prohibitively expensive.

A major stumbling block would be simply obtaining specimens of every species. A lot of species are known from only one or just a few specimens. A lot of countries have laws preventing you from taking species out of the country. A lot of species are from deep-sea environments so collection can only be a chance event, not a targeted one. Those are just some of the reasons, but it would literally be impossible to collect live specimens of every known arthropod for your zoo. But assuming you could somehow do so, your claim to "house every known species of arthropod" would also only last about a day before new species were discovered and/or described.

Keeping them all alive would be your next issue. Many species are dietary specialists and their requirements are often unknown. A lot of species have specific habitat requirements, such as hydrothermal vents or local environments (e.g. in cave systems). There are at least thousands of species which are parasitic on vertebrates.

Sustaining your stocks would be another issue. I'm not sure what you mean by them being "ambient" but for the vast majority of arthropods their breeding cycles are only known in general terms. You could make assumptions based on related species, but still for a huge number of species you would be having to constantly keep up your stock by wild collection (which brings you back to the "obtaining specimens" issue from earlier).

In terms of expensive, ignore all the terrestrial arthropods and just take a minute to think about how many aquariums you would need to be running for the aquatic ones, and how much that would actually cost in electricity for filtration, lighting, heating, chilling, etc. There are upwards of 70,000 known species of crustaceans, most of which are aquatic. You could house some species together, it is true, but you're still limited by compatibility, temperature, salinity, etc. And then there are all the myriad pinhead-sized ones like copepods and ostracods - you've easily got 20,000 species of them to house.

As to how the zoo would "look" - it would probably be incredibly boring. Apart for butterfly walk-through-type exhibits the display of most arthropods is really restricted to terrariums or aquariums, especially with the sheer numbers of species as you would have. So most of it would be "tanks in walls". Just endless tanks in walls which people would be walking past, quicker and quicker as they passed the hundredth spider tank, then the thousandth spider tank, then the ten-thousandth spider tank. By the forty-thousandth spider tank they would have probably gone completely insane. Possibly by that point they wouldn't even be interested in the 48,000 mite species on display in the next section of the zoo.
 
Your are totally right. I knew such a zoo would be impossible. However, I think it makes for a nice thought experiment. That last paragraph certainly put a funny image in my head.

Though, being me, I could spend my whole life in this theoretical place and never get bored. But most aren't like me in this regard.
 
The rhino exhibit required to sustain Gyrostigma rhinocerontis might keep them entertained slightly longer :P
 
Swampy said:
The rhino exhibit required to sustain Gyrostigma rhinocerontis might keep them entertained slightly longer :p
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an interesting idea for the display of parasitic arthropods might be to have a "docent" (if it is in America) or other volunteer with various species in his or her flesh - botfly larvae, screw-worms, ticks, mites, etc. They could walk around the buildings showing them to kids. They could be paid more than the regular staff for the inconvenience.
 
Chlidonias said:
an interesting idea for the display of parasitic arthropods might be to have a "docent" (if it is in America) or other volunteer with various species in his or her flesh - botfly larvae, screw-worms, ticks, mites, etc. They could walk around the buildings showing them to kids. They could be paid more than the regular staff for the inconvenience.
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That's pretty cool
 
Chlidonias said:
an interesting idea for the display of parasitic arthropods might be to have a "docent" (if it is in America) or other volunteer with various species in his or her flesh - botfly larvae, screw-worms, ticks, mites, etc. They could walk around the buildings showing them to kids. They could be paid more than the regular staff for the inconvenience.
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I can't wait to see the walk-through mosquito aviary in action.
 
Maybe the zoo should be the size of Earth? Allegedly every species of plant has a mite or an insect specialized in eating it.
How to display acarids (mites) which are mostly too small to be seen with the naked eye? Or internal parasites?
Anyway, you inspired me to think how a zoo/museum might show insects in an interesting way.
 
The most similar thing that could be imaginable- although also not makeable - would be display all arthropod species pinned or alcohol-preserved in an unique collection to display to public. That would mean the elimination of every natural history museum in the world for make an unique World Museum by the joining of all of them (that also implies probably the deletion of all countries of the world, making aun unique World country), as well as the cesion of the private collections visitable only for scientific researcher into a public display just for fun (although public would never fin fun in a series of 200 boxes of slides of microscopic mites). But altough impossible, at least here you would save the problems of keeping insects alive (space, environment), replacing dead specimens, getting new ones, etc.

And the most similar thing ever that actually could be makeable, is just a list of all the extant artrhopods (and maybe adding also the rest of animals and plants, that are not many more). This is overhelming difficult, and impossible for a person alone, but it's being done by projects like EOL (Encyclopedia of Life) and ToL (Tree of Life). I find EOL much better than ToL beucause it have the work muuuuuuch more advanced and you can compare different taxonomic trees for each taxon and different taxonomic/nomenclatural opinions and choose the one you prefair for each taxon, while ToL keeps only one taxonomy. However this ingent empress still takes zillions of years of work that must be updated constantly and the participation of dozens, if not hundreds of expert that often must confront themselves in different taxonomies.
 
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