Buckeridge John
Earth and Oceanic Systems Group, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Integr Zool. 2011 Mar;6(1):3-12. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-4877.2010.00225.x.
At least zoologists know that barnacles are arthropods rather than mollusks. However, this knowledge is surprisingly new, for it was as recent as 1830 before J. Vaughan Thompson showed, through a careful study of barnacle larvae, that they were crustaceans. In the 1850s, Charles Darwin unraveled much of the taxonomy of barnacles, and, significantly, his observations and classification of them follow the structure that was to be published later as his evolutionary theory. Irrespective of these works, knowledge of the systematic placement of barnacles remains surprisingly poor in the wider population today, with most non-biologists viewing barnacles as shallow-water fouling organisms related to oysters and limpets. The present paper reviews the way humans have perceived barnacles for at least a millennium; it evaluates why they were thought to have grown from trees and to have been part of the life cycle of birds; it concludes by contemplating the manner in which we perceive our environment and by doing so try to make sense of our world.
至少动物学家知道藤壶是节肢动物而不是软体动物。然而，这一知识竟然是相当新的，因为直到1830年，J. 沃恩·汤普森通过对藤壶幼虫的仔细研究才表明它们是甲壳类动物。在19世纪50年代，查尔斯·达尔文解开了藤壶分类学的许多谜团，重要的是，他对藤壶的观察和分类遵循了后来作为他的进化论发表的结构。尽管有这些研究成果，但如今广大民众对藤壶在分类学上的归属了解仍然少得惊人，大多数非生物学家认为藤壶是与牡蛎和帽贝有关的浅水污损生物。本文回顾了至少一千年来人类对藤壶的认知方式；评估了为什么它们被认为是从树上生长出来的，以及为什么被认为是鸟类生命周期的一部分；最后通过思考我们感知环境的方式，试图理解我们的世界。
