Armadillidiidae

Armadillidiidae
Armadillidium vulgare
Armadillidium vulgare in its defensive posture
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Subphylum:	Crustacea
Class:	Malacostraca
Order:	Isopoda
Suborder:	Oniscidea
Family:	Armadillidiidae Brandt, 1833
Genera
See text

Armadillidiidae is a family of woodlice, a terrestrial crustacean group in the order Isopoda. Unlike members of the family Porcellionidae, members of this family can roll into a ball, giving them their common name of "pill bug", "Woodlouse", "potato bug", "doodlebug", or the more recent and increasingly popularized term, "roly-poly", which has been used regionally as early as 1968. Uncited references also date use of the term in Texas as early as 1925.

The best known species in the family is Armadillidium vulgare, the common pill bug. These arthropods commonly feed on decaying vegetation and are found under logs, garbage pails or any other place where moisture can be found. Moisture is essential to pill bugs due to their breathing organs, which are like gills. Pill bugs, although often thriving in damp areas, have often been known to live in dry beds. Pill bugs' defensive posture is curling up into a ball. Pill bugs have no specialized predators, though they play host to specialized parasitoids in the fly family Rhinophoridae.

Genera include:

• Alloschizidium
• Armadillidium
• Ballodillium
• Cristarmadillidium
• Cyphodillidium
• Echinarmadillidium
• Eleoniscus
• Eluma
• Paxodillidium
• Platanosphaera
• Schizidium
• Trichodillidium
• Troglarmadillidium
• Typhlarmadillidium

Popular culture

• The fictional characters of Retrax and Powerhug (from the Transformers franchise) turn from robots into pillbugs.

• Tuck & Roll were two pill bugs featured in the Disney-Pixar movie A Bug's Life.

• The meal served at the restaurant in The Emperor's New Groove is shown as a giant cooked pillbug.