Critique A Spanish Springtail

Its got a very Kat shape to it... was this on the rivers edge? Great find considering you didn't think you would get anything.

Beautiful... little beast (y)
 
Where`s the matador and red cloth ;) Really liking the green colour of this spanish one and the stack is superbe as it accentuates all the hairs on its body, great find there Tim.
Maybe I should get my @rse out there and look for some but with my eyes and wearing glasses is something that dont go hand in hand.
 
the second one is Brilliant :)
great angle and perfect amount in focus
 
Tintin124 said:
Its got a very Kat shape to it... was this on the rivers edge? Great find considering you didn't think you would get anything.

Beautiful... little beast (y)
Click to expand...
Yes, I see what you mean. The hairy face is very different to the Dicyrtomina species i usually find. I think it is a close relation of Alacma fusca, which has an equally impressive face but need to figure out how they are linked..
Yes I found this on the river bank. A very different place to when I visited last. What was a dry dusty desert last Spring is now clay/mud filled with dew laden grass. Quite a transformation!

LCPete said:
the second one is Brilliant :)
great angle and perfect amount in focus
Click to expand...
Cheers Pete.
 
Fantastic shots. Spot on.

As has been mentioned on Flickr, they really are very similar to S.viridis aren't they?
 
Whooosh! both are superb! I love the tones in the first and the perfect left antenna in the second. What surface are they on?.
 
Thanks guys!

Logical Fallacy said:
As has been mentioned on Flickr, they really are very similar to S.viridis aren't they?
Click to expand...
Yeah I had them flagged as viridis initially, but then checking through the sminthurus page on collembola.org I came across the hispanicus images from Ronald Beer in Ibiza and also some from La Palma by Toby Barton that had exactly the same patterning and colour as my ones. Within viridis there is definitely a lot of variation, some are bright green whilst other are mainly deep browns, but these hispanicus are the closest match for mine that I have come across. Taken into account my current location, it seems to make sense.

Here is the key idenitifiers for viridis taken from Collembola.org:

viridis
Body not only with small violet spots. Body colour not with dorsal dark band or dorsal dark spots. Fifth abdominal segment without dark cross stripes. Fifth abdominal segment with 1 + 1 setae above bothriotrichia D + D. Fourth antennal segment with at most 25 subsegments. Mucro with both posterior edges smooth. Mucronal seta present. Postantennal setae long. Third subcoxa with 1 short, distal seta. Third tibiotarsus row p with 7 setae. Ventral tube with 1 + 1 setae.

And here is hispanicus:

hispanicus
Body not only with small violet spots. Body colour not with dorsal dark band or dorsal dark spots. Fifth abdominal segment with 2 + 2 setae above bothriotrichia D + D. Fifth abdominal segment with setae A1 longer then A2. Fourth antennal segment with at most 25 subsegments. Mucro with both posterior edges smooth. Mucronal seta present. Third tibiotarsus with all inner setae long, thick and acuminate. Ventral tube with 1 + 1 setae.

So the difference seems to be in the 5th abdominal segment:
"Fifth abdominal segment with 2 + 2 setae above bothriotrichia D + D. Fifth abdominal segment with setae A1 longer then A2."

I can't really make these out on my images to be sure though, and I can't find a decent anatomical diagram of a globular specimen to help me decipher it all!

Anyway, I'm going with hispanicus until someone can give a definitive reason for it not to be ;)


T0p cat said:
Whooosh! both are superb! I love the tones in the first and the perfect left antenna in the second. What surface are they on?.
Click to expand...
They are on my back pack and neoprene lens case respectively. I tried to get some in the long grass I found them in but they were mpossible to track, and they were on a steep bank it was difficult to climb up. I did find a couple that had landed on my bag when I put it down, which actually made them lot easier to spot and a bit of variety for the background. I hope to get some in a more natural environment before I head home though!
 
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