Springtail nursery ...
I'm very pleased (well, quite excited really), to have found that I have lots of the aquatic springtail Sminthurides aquaticus active on our newly-created garden wildlife pond. I've been trying to get some decent shots over the last week or so.
These are very small; they range from about 1mm in length or less. I was searching around on some of the floating vegetation and photographed this individual on some duck-weed leaves. As soon as I got the image on my PC, I could see hat there were juvenile forms on the leaf too. Not only that, but there are some unhatched individuals too. The females cut into the leaf surface (as I understand it) and deposit eggs into the cut area. It looks like there are three developing eggs in front of the largest springtail and others (out-of-focus) around on the leaf surface..
Springtail nursery ...
I'm very pleased (well, quite excited really), to have found that I have lots of the aquatic springtail Sminthurides aquaticus active on our newly-created garden wildlife pond. I've been trying to get some decent shots over the last week or so.
These are very small; they range from about 1mm in length or less. I was searching around on some of the floating vegetation and photographed this individual on some duck-weed leaves. As soon as I got the image on my PC, I could see hat there were juvenile forms on the leaf too. Not only that, but there are some unhatched individuals too. The females cut into the leaf surface (as I understand it) and deposit eggs into the cut area. It looks like there are three developing eggs in front of the largest springtail and others (out-of-focus) around on the leaf surface..