COLOSSENDEIS MEGALONYX
There are over 1,100 species of sea spiders (Arango &Wheeler 2007).
general info on colossendeis Megalonyx
Sea spider size ranges from 1 millimeter to over 70 centimeters (wikipedia.org).
Taxonomy
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Calss: Pycnogonid
Order: Pantopoda
Family: Colossendeidae
Genus: Colossendeis
Species: Colossendeis megalonyx
Feeds similarly to sea stars, sort of.
C. megalonyx extends its proboscis and basically sucks up its prey
Mcmurdo oceanographic observatory, antarctica
Unfortunately, the McMurdo observatory in Antarctica was decommissioned and removed near the end of 2019. There was a live feed camera anchored to the sea floor where you could click the link and see live footage from the comfort of your own home. Now, the video is a recording. (Photo credit: MOO)
Pycnogonids in general are less studied and not well represented in fossil records (Arango and Wheeler 2007).
This is a benthic picnogonid, and its vertical distribution ranges from 7 meters all the way to approximately 4,900 meters depth (sealifebase.se).
So far, there are less than 1,500 described Pycnogonida species worldwide (Brenneis et al. 2017). One possible explanation is that because such a small percentage of the world’s deep oceans are explored so far, more haven’t been discovered yet (that’s my best guess).
C. megalonyx, at least in an aquarium setting (in a lab, under observation), is a “generalist” feeder, including feeding on smaller pycnogonids (Dietz et al. 2018)
