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From Frans- Diagnostic to Heteromurus nitidus is the relatively short 4th abdominal segment (typical to Orchesellinae), the scale cover, the subsegmented 1st antennal segment, the annulated apical antennal segment, the reddish eyepatch with 0 or 1 single eye.
A springtail with no spring.Kalaphorura burmeisteri. They are also blind- adapted for living in dark confined spaces
After weeks of searching my pond, hours a day with my 10x loupe, yesterday I finally found this lone instar, orange with red eye patches, and much smaller than the first instar S. aquaticus. This is an extreme crop of an 11:1 photo
We have a healthy backyard population of these tiny globular springtails. I believe the antennal characters would place these in Dicyrtomidae - ie last segment shorter than preceding segment (seen below, and in link). AFD lists only the one species from Tasmania, Dicyrtomina tuberculata Womersley 1933.
The small springtail is possibly Megalothorax minimus.
See www.stevehopkin.co.uk/collembolamaps/Neelipleona/355MGmin/
Four 'compartments' of the gut are visible through the translucent skin and are seen as a dark dashed stripe down the center of the abdomen.
The view across the width of the visible portal is less than 3.5 mm.
Uncropped shot taken at 5.2:1 with the monster. Just seeing if it was possible :)
see www.flickr.com/photos/lordv/82887579/
for setup
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 may not be clear enough.
A tiny white aster with hunchback collembola, probably Lepidocyrtus paradoxus. This type seems to like living flowers, not just decaying things.
Found by the bike trail in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Corrections appreciated.
A few years ago when I was pretending to be a mycologist I became aware that the community was using PlaqSearch (Google it) for differential staining of fungi. This is designed to show if you have dental plaque so it is safe to use as it is designed to go in your mouth. In fungi, some tissues stain blue and others pink. I still have a bottle of this kicking around in my microscope kit and every time I make slides I think "I should try it on springtails". And so I did.
My first attempt was on Isotoma viridis preserved in 70% alcohol - a 5 minute stain, destain in water and mount. The results were underwhelming, just a few random pink patches resulting from inefficient destaining I think. In retrospect, since PlaqSearch is water-based this was predictable because of the hydrophobic nature of the Collembolan cuticle.
I had another go, this time with a cleared specimen.
Nothing really of interest, so I conclude that PlaqSearch doesn't offer anything of interest to the Collembologist (if that's a word).
I was up at King Alfred's tower today, at the top of Stourhead gardens and in the woods I found this chap. Very stunning looking with the long setae, with all the associated leaf-sticking problems that come along with such ostentatiousness!
I am keeping this young O. cincta in a test tube to observe the changes in color and size as it grows up. No real change in coloration yet but it is so cool to me to see the broken antenna has regrown! Give me a month or two and I hope to have successfully completed the experiment ;)
P.S. to Frans: I wish I could follow through with the other tasks you have set me with my microscope, but I managed to break it ;-/
The same day that I found the mating Sminthurides springtails I also found these Pauropods! Although this wasn't the first time I'd seen Pauropods, it was the most I've seen at one time. They were all darting around, making it hard to get an accurate count, but I probably saw between 10-15. This one ran right by a small Onychiuridae springtail, providing a good idea of how tiny even the largest of the Pauropods were.
This is such a beautiful little springtail. The markings are outrageous for the UK ! Springtails are the bomb. The business. They rock.
Another one from today; a medium-sized individual ~0.85 mm. Frans is speculating that there may be two distinct groups; Group 1 where abd.6 in adults is pale, and Group 2 where abd.6 in adults is dark. Not sure if this is a mature specimen, but seems to be Group 2.
[Part of a garden survey of the "novel" springtail Katiannidae Genus nov.1 sp. nov. that I'm doing for FransJanssens@www.collembola.org to establish the size and differences between the various instars.
Canon MP-E65mm Macro (at 5x) + 1.4x tele-extender + 25mm extension tube + diffused MT24-EX Twinlite flash. Cropped.]
These are photos of my untamed yard. This is section of my tiny creek when it is low.
Taken in Battle Ground, Clark Co., WA, USA