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Top row: Dicyrtomina ornata, Dicyrtomina minuta, Monobella grassei
Bottom row: Entomobrya intermedia, Orchesella cincta, Orchesella villosa
Thanks for the notes Frans.
Dark colour means this is a male I think.
Donington & Albrighton Wildlife Site, Shrops.
Confirmed by Frans.
The first globular springtail I encountered in our Staffordshire garden this morning was another Katianna nr schotti! Once again, I'm attempting to determine gender of these (as requested by Frans Janssens). There is a hint of a sub-anal appendage (SAA) on this one. If so, that would make it a female.
I've been neglecting my little garden survey, but managed some shots yesterday. I've been looking at dark and orange forms of the globular springtail Sminthurinus aureus.
These have all been cropped by the same amount and generally, the individuals darken as they mature and get larger. Here (top, left) is a rather small but dark one. Apart from the largest one, the heads are generally paler than the large abdomen in the dark forms.
I've seen hundreds over the past few weeks. All have been the orange or dark forms. Not a single "typical" yellow form. In our garden, it would be reasonable to assume the the yellow form is a rare variant of the dark form!
Not a great picture, but it has rained so much that the springtails have been flushed out the soil! Not a creature I usually get to see, they are so small I usually don't stop to investigate them
Springtails on the side of the pond X2 .
Sminthurides aquaticus. Juvenile female practicing lifting a juvenile male on the left.
I have not been seeing many dark-form Sminthurinus springtails in the garden recently. The areas where I generally photograph them is particularly wet at the moment, so I decided to look at another garden spot which is at the top of the slope and a little "dryer". I've not really looked there properly before.
Anyway; interesting findings. There were reasonable numbers there, but ALL looked somewhat different from the dark forms that I generally see (with a very-dark, shiny cuticle to the head and abdomen). These were paler and less shiny, with a somewhat mottled black/brown or black/green cuticle. I didn't see any of the very-dark/shiny individuals. Also didn't see any gold/yellow forms (which rarely appear anywhere in the garden).
[All cropped similarly.]
In the recent snowy weather I thought I'd see how the Globular Springtails were faring and turned over a few rocks in my garden. To my surprise there were still lots of springtails attached to the underside of the rocks, many partially set into the ice. As the light reached them they slowly started to move and these two shots are of a couple of individuals wandering around the ice.