Invertebrate of the Year Q&A: Tardigrades, Worms, Woodlice
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- The Guardian's Invertebrate of the Year has launched its third annual vote, with natural history writer Patrick Barkham hosting a live reader Q&A about the contenders and their survival strategies
- Earthworms survive drought by burrowing deeper and entering estivation for up to three weeks, wrapping into tight balls in mucus-lined chambers to retain humidity
- The immortal jellyfish regenerates under stress by shrinking into a ball, dropping to the ocean floor, and budding off a new polyp with an identical genome
- The swallowtail butterfly's chrysalis can survive being submerged by floodwater, and UK winter floods actually helped the species by displacing predatory mice
- Tardigrades have been on the Moon since 2019 after an Israeli spacecraft crashed with the "Lunar Library," but a 2021 Astrobiology study found they likely couldn't survive the impact shock, and any survivors would remain inert without liquid water
- Woodlice are land-dwelling crustaceans with over 5,000 species, more closely related to crabs than insects, and likely to outlast humanity due to their resistance to toxins and pollutants
Why it matters: The Q&A reveals that across multiple invertebrates, evolution has produced survival mechanisms—from estivation and regeneration to crash tolerance—that make small creatures more resilient than humans in the climate crisis, while the woodlouse's toxin resistance positions it as a likely survivor of planetary pollution.
