Caecosphaeroma is a troglodytic isopod genus in the family Sphaeromatidae found in caves of NE and SW France. The genus was split off from Monolistra by Adrien Dollfus in 1896; in both genera, the female carries about 10 fertilized eggs in its external marsupium (brood pouch); they are white in Monolistra but bluish-green in Caecosphaeroma. C. burgundum is the most studied species.
GENUS
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Caecosphaeroma is a troglodytic isopod genus in the family Sphaeromatidae found in caves of NE and SW France. The genus was split off from Monolistra by Adrien Dollfus in 1896; in both genera, the female carries about 10 fertilized eggs in its external marsupium (brood pouch); they are white in Monolistra but bluish-green in Caecosphaeroma. C. burgundum is the most studied species.
==Description== thumb|left|Three examples; two rolled into balls. These individuals were found in the Nancy spéléodrome (an abandoned underground aqueduct in Villers-lès-Nancy, France). They measure from 2–20 mm long. As cave dwellers, they have lost their vision, but remain sensitive to light, which they shun. They are capable of volvation (rolling themselves into a ball) to protect themselves, rest, or sleep. During copulation the male and female embrace takes the form of two concentric spheres.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).