Woodlouse wonder

Yesterday was my 150th blip and, sometime this week, my blipfoto site received its 20,000th view. For ages, I've meant to include a photo of a woodlouse in my blipfoto posts. I've previously published scientific papers on the ecology of crabs in estuaries and woodlice are from the same class of organism, the Crustacea, and I'm drawn to these terrestrial cousins of crabs. As air-breathers, woodlice have lungs instead of the gills of crabs, lobsters and shrimps. Woodlice are really harmless little creatures and, although many gardeners have a low opinion of them, they are actually very beneficial organisms, feeding on and reprocessing large amounts of dead leaf material and thereby providing an important service of nutrient recycling. I've never tried to identity one of these to species level before but we have an easy-to-use key produced by the Field Studies Council. I think this is a Common Rough Woodlouse (scientific name: Porcellio scaber, a very widespread and common species across Britain, favouring quite dry environments. Indeed, this one was living under a plant pot on my extremely dry stone patio. I'll be seeing what other woodlouse species we have in the garden and whether I can capture any decent photos!