View allAll Photos Tagged springtail
Globular springtail on dew covered water barrel lid with a red milk bottle top placed behind it. Focus stacked using zerene
All though it has been a cold Winter, i don't think this little guy has bought himself a warm fur coat.
Is it a fungal infection. ?
An interesting mature female (1.35 mm) from the garden today. Abdominal segment 6 (abd.6) is less pigmented than abd.5, but does have some darker areas at the tip. There's no orange/red colouration (apart from the little dots where the bothriotricha are anchored). As such, I'm favouring Group 1 rather than Group 2; but I'm open to negotiation!. Whatever, this is an attractive colour form.
[Part of a garden survey of the "novel" springtail Katiannidae Genus nov.1 sp. nov. that I'm doing with FransJanssens@www.collembola.org initially, to establish the size and differences between the various instars. As a result of the initial findings, Frans is speculating that there are two distinct groups:
Group 1 - where abd.6 in adults is pale, and
Group 2 - where abd.6 in adults is dark.
Canon MP-E65mm Macro (at 5x) + 1.4x tele-extender + 25mm extension tube + diffused MT24-EX Twinlite flash. Several images blended in PSE. Cropped.]
Springtails at Swell Wood a few days ago. Many thanks to Max Thompson Photo and Ellie Hilsdon who scurried around finding likely-looking logs while I mostly sat at the picnic table!
I hope to learn if the setae can determine the sex for this species. I need help confirming the sex of these please.
This one appears to be male?
Another behaviour shot of the aquatic springtail Sminthurides aquaticus. This female (about 1mm long) is on a piece of bark that is floating on the surface of our garden pond.
These springtails produce a globule of fluid and then roll it around their body with their legs, to clean themselves. Fascinating to watch, but difficult to photograph. This individual was only about 1mm long. A composite of two images, blended in Photoshop.
Globular springtail on a greenhouse strut. Focus stacked using zerene.
See www.flickr.com/photos/lordv/25346538698/ for a 3D version
Floating in one of my ornamental tubs. Hopefully Frans will confirm the ids. The D. ornata look huge by comparison. Have never seen Sminthurinus niger species before, these are really tiny. I did manage to rescue all of them and most were still alive.
Tiny little Springtail, they run pretty fast too! Great to find one on first macro trip of the year and with the R5ii also.
Damp globular springtail on the greenhouse glass with a bottle top behind it. Focus stacked using zerene
Springtails at Swell Wood a few days ago. Many thanks to Max Thompson Photo and Ellie Hilsdon who scurried around finding likely-looking logs while I mostly sat at the picnic table!
I think those little green discs - they're only a millimeter across at the most - are some sort of liverwort.
I went back to the walled garden at Weston Park this morning. There was a good selection of globular springtails to see and photograph. This is a generally uncultivated grassy area with some fruit trees (mainly apple). The springtails were under fallen leaves on the wet grass.
Top left is a dark-form of Sminthurinus aureus and underneath it, another form of Sminthurinus aureus similar to the one I saw earlier in the week. The others are all Sminthurinus elegans (some darker than others). The individual bottom-right lacks the mid-dorsal stripe. These are designated Sminthurinus elegans forma ornata.
Anurida marítima.
Some of you will have seen my posts in this group of terrestrial springtials, AKA Collembolla. Collembola are hexapods not insects and are one of the most widely spread and numerous of all animals in the world. They live virtually everywhere; car parks and city streets, in sand, up trees, on water, in houses, on plants and very commonly in and around soil. Wherever you go, looking with a hand-lens, there will most likely be a collembolan scampering away from you. In sheer numbers, they are reputed to be one of the most abundant of all macroscopic animals, with estimates of 100,000 individuals per square meter of ground. I say macroscopic but they are tiny, most are only 2-3mm long.
They're officially the deepest living land animal, with a new species, Plutomurus ortobalaganensis, found in Krubera-Veronja cave in the Western Caucacus at a depth of 1,980 metres (6,500 feet) below ground. It was tempted out using cheese.
Desoria species of Collembola happily live on the summit of Mount Everest, while another genus in Tasmania lives for certainly part of its life, underwater, eating crunchy diatoms.
Collembola are one of nature's ultimate niche fillers, able to find a way into almost any environment in the world, given time. And time is something they've had a lot of. In 1919 a fossil collembolan, Rhyniella praecursor was found in the Rhynie chert. The chert dates to around 410 million years old, meaning that collembolans were one of the very first arthropods to become terrestrial.
This one, Anurida maritima (seashore springtail), is a cosmopolitan collembolan of the intertidal zone and is often found in aggregations of several hundred strong on the surface of rock pools. I had never seen one before today.