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Love these little things... About 2 mm or so in length.
This one is showing its eversible vesicle cleaning tube.
100mm L macro with full set of Kenko extension tubes (thanks Steve for the use of)...
Lifted up a rotten piece of wood and found at least 4 species under there! The globular ones (top left) mostly pinged off but the others barely moved! Not good shots as they're beyond my camera's abilities really, but thought I'd upload a montage anyway!
Upton Magna - Shropshire
Thanks to Frans for naming them! There's actually 5 species!
Top left = Dicyrtomina ornata + Dicyrtomina saundersi
Top right = Neanura muscorum, a springless springtail
Bottom left = Isotoma viridis
Bottom right = Pogonognathellus flavescens
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
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I picked up a new toy today and now have a new found interest in spring tails. This is a single image at the max mag on the 90mm but now doubled by having a 2x tele converter fitted. As my brain learns the new working distance I shall improve and might be able to get some stacks if any ever sit still long enough..
Spring tails are very small and also very interesting. They vary a lot. Some have eyes and some do not.
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There's an area of our Staffordshire garden where there is a population of this globular springtail - Katianna schoetti. Not often recorded in the UK (like many springtail species) and apparently, no other county records.
FransJanssens@www.collembola.org has asked if I can get shots of the underside of the small abdomen to see if it's possible to determine gender. Wonder if this image is of any use.
We've had our first good rain for ages and ages, and the springtails are out en masse in the water bowls and droplets. There are a couple of species in here, seen best in the middle image.
Springtails floating on a shallow puddle (the group is only about 3/$ - 1 inch across. Carson City, Nevada
I loved the form and color - and the fact that they are so common, but rarely noticed...
More leaves left out in our Staffordshire garden last night as springtail shelters. Got lots of photographs this morning.
This is interesting. The dark (ochropus) form of Sminthurinus aureus with a dark orange (fuscus) form in the background. Then what should come wandering in from the right but (what looks like) Sphaeridia pumilis. This is one of the UK's smallest globular springtails at ~0.3mm in length. It's like the Serengeti on some of these leaves!
At first glance this image isn't overly appealing. When you realize this is a macro image of a springtail hexapod, commonly but incorrectly known as a "snow flea" it becomes unique. These tiny creatures resemble spilled pepper on the surface of the snow and are are virtually inconspicuous. Three extension tubes were used in conjunction with a macro lens plus a large crop to reveal the true appearance of this tiny creature. They are harmless and feed on decaying matter or algae on the snow. They have an "anti freeze" that keeps them from freezing in frigid weather.
Springtail, Tomocerus vulgaris
This species of springtails (collembola) is covered by small iridiscent scales. They are a kind of protection, but they get off easily - thus a tentative predator can not hold the springtail.
This is a living specimen, just "fixed" with a small droplet of water (adhesion) for a few seconds, to do the bracketing (around 300 single shots).
A magnified picture of a scale is here
Mitutoyo 7.4 NA 0.21, tube lense: ITL200 (Nikon)
Illumination: oblique and polarized backlight
The garden was nice and wet this morning with dew and fallen leaves on the lawn; perfect for springtail hunting. What I usually do is set up my camera on a solid surface with a little elevated platform in front of it. Just a block of wood or something. Sometimes I clip a small LED light above it (things can look pretty dim through the viewfinder). I then carefully pick up leaves from the lawn and scan the underside with a x5 hand-lens. When I find a leaf with springtails, I carefully walk them over to the camera and place them on the platform. If I'm lucky, the springtail is still there when I arrive (they are very prone to "springing" if disturbed).
This dark form of Sminthurinus aureus survived the journey and I managed some shots as it tiptoed across the leaf. I haven't got my current set-up calibrated for measurement, but typically these are a little over 0.5mm long.
Canon 1D IV + MP-E Macro (at x5) + full set on Kenko extension tubes + YN24EX twinlite flash. Cropped.
I'm attempting to get as many photographs of the male and female instars of the Katiannid springtail (Katiannidae Genus nov.1 sp. nov.) that we have in our Staffordshire garden. This is a "novel" species that has only been reported during the past 10 years (I think). I'm preparing a large matrix of images (6 images x 4 images) to post on Flickr and have been particularly looking for less mature instars.
This individual was crawling up the side of a black plastic garden storage bin. I rather liked the angle and composition, so thought I'd post it as a single image!
Canon MP-E65mm Macro (at 5x) + 1.4x tele-extender + 25mm extension tube + diffused MT24-EX Twinlite flash. Cropped. This individual ~0.6 mm.
I had time for a quick springtail hunt this morning, and found this tiny (less than 1mm) and cute Katiannidae (more specifically, a male Katiannidae Gen1 nov sp nov; many thanks to Frans Janssens for the information) on my compost bin. I took this single image at about 3x magnification using my MP-E 65mm lens, with some `redirected' on-camera flash (I still need to work on that!). The image was still quite underexposed (so needed some twiddling), was taken at high ISO, and is a large crop, so it's a bit noisy. Ideally, I need to sort my flash set-up out, and it'd be great to stack these, but they always seem to be constantly on the move.
One of the few adult instars of this springtail (Katiannidae Genus nov.1 sp. nov.) that I saw in the garden today. Lots of early instars around though. This individual (~1.15 mm) is a female of the Group 1 type. They have a non-pigmented 6th abdominal segment (not really visible in this shot). She's scuttling across a piece of broken terracotta pot.
This one kept me quite an afternoon busy . There were 2 specimen between layers tree bark, but deep, so that my light dit not reach them. Occasionally they came closer to the edge and I had to take my chance. Also he has a short right antenna !
3 pictures merged for the sharpness in photoshop cs6.
Globular springtails on the side of my large pond just near the water line. I assume they are Sminthurides aquaticus although I'm puzzled that it is only the small ones picking each other up by the antennae - I thought this was part of their courtship behaviour ?
I've been seeing a few of these orange globular springtails in our Staffordshire garden. This is the first time I've managed to get a shot of one though.
I'm assuming that it's a colour form of Sminthurinus aureus. No idea really though!
Not sure on ID
Found under one of our Orchids, when watering i noticed the movement so poured the water back into the jug, they happily were jumping around on the surface of the water so i had plenty of time to set a camera up,
can you count them?
the largest ones could be 1 millimetre in length
More courtship, but comparing this with the recent courtship shot, it shows that the size let's you tell the male and female apaprt in this species, not the colour! The smaller male here is the more usual colour form, and the larger female is D.pallipes forma repanda, the dominant form in my garden as far as I can tell.
springtail animation X4. Sminthurides aquaticus
See www.flickr.com/photos/lordv/51851373331/sizes/o/ for animation
A selection of globular springtails from our Staffordshire garden today. All found under fallen beech leaves on the lawn.
Top row; Sminthurinus aureus, both typical and dark forms. Bottom left Sphaeridia pumilis, bottom right Sminthurinus elegans.
The dark forms of Sminthurinus aureus are particularly numerous at the moment. One leaf that I looked under must have had several dozen on it!
Canon 5D Mk III + MP-E lens (at 5x magnification) + 1.4x tele-extender + 25mm extension tube + YN24EX flash. Heavily cropped.
The weather was so appalling today there was no scope for getting out with the camera so I brought the outside, inside. This is a springtail (Collembola) - Dicyrtomina ornata. It is a globular springtail about 2mm long, found on a piece of dead wood. They use their abdominal, tail-like appendage, the furcula, that is folded beneath the body for jumping when the it is threatened. It is held under tension by a small structure called the retinaculum (or tenaculum) and when released, snaps against the substrate, flinging the springtail into the air. All of this takes place in as little as 18 milliseconds. For their size they can jump incredible distances with 30cm being possible; scaled to a human that is equivalent to us jumping 270m!
Family outing in Fred and Jean’s garden.
Deuterosminthurus sp. springtails
This is the time of the year to see springtails. They contribute to the health of your soil.
I saw these many years ago and because they are so tiny you have to look carefully for them. I knew I has seen the on our daisy petals and was very happy to find and photograph them again this year.
Males and females have a ritual before mating where they head butt each other and I managed to photograph a pair doing this. The females are much larger than the males.
Photos Swan View 7 August 2026
About this time in 2017, I visited an orchard in a walled-garden at a local stately home. I found an unusual Sminthurinus springtail there. It's possible that it's a species new to science and it has been given the designation "Sminthurinus sp.5 Janssens & Phillips 2017".
Today I visited the same site to see if I could find it again. The ground was rather dry and I struggled to find any leaves with springtails underneath. I then found a shaded area that yielded the specimens (1-5) above. Number 6 is an example of sp.5 from last year. Note the lateral and rear pigment patches and the patch with a horizontal line on abd.5. It looks like none of the five samples I found today are the same, although they are all Sminthurinus species. I'll be going back!
I haven't "got my eye in" yet this year, but assume that 1-5 are all forms of Sminthurinus aureus.