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This ability gives woodlice in this family their common names of pill bugs [1] or roly polies. [2] Other common names include slaters , potato bugs , butchy boys , [ 3 ] and doodle bugs . [ 4 ] Most species are native to the Mediterranean Basin, while a few species have wider European distributions.
Armadillidium (/ ɑːr m ə d ɪ ˈ l ɪ d i ə m /) is a genus of the small terrestrial crustacean known as the woodlouse. Armadillidium are also commonly known as pill woodlice, leg pebbles, pill bugs, roly-poly, or potato bugs, and are often confused with pill millipedes such as Glomeris marginata.
Armadillidium vulgare, the common pill-bug, potato bug, common pill woodlouse, roly-poly, slater, doodle bug, or carpenter, is a widespread European species of woodlouse. It is the most extensively investigated terrestrial isopod species. [ 2 ]
Additionally, pill bugs have a thorax consisting of 7 body segments, 5 abdominal segments, and a pleotelson, while Glomeris millipedes lack a visually defined thorax and have 12 body segments total. While the uropods of pillbugs are relatively quite small, flipping a pill bug over will reveal the small uropod overlapping the pleotelson. [41]
Like members of the woodlice family Armadillidiidae, armadillids are capable of enrolling into a sphere (conglobation), and are commonly known as pill bugs. [4] [5] Some species, however, have secondarily lost their conglobation ability. For example, a species exist in which the males lack the inner face of the coxal plates and are therefore ...
The giant isopods are noted for their resemblance to the much smaller common woodlouse (pill bug), to which they are related. [3] French zoologist Alphonse Milne-Edwards was the first [4] to describe the genus in 1879 [5] after his colleague Alexander Agassiz collected a juvenile male B. giganteus from the Gulf of Mexico.
Armadillidium nasatum, the nosy pill woodlouse, is a large, Western European-based species of woodlouse that has been introduced to North America, along with Armadillidium vulgare also found in other parts of Europe.
Armadillidium depressum, the southern pill woodlouse [5] is a large, relatively common British species of woodlouse characterized by its "splayed" appearance.