09.12.18 - Knighton

Having come up trumps with leaf litter samples recently, I popped out to the local churchyard for another Bag For Life full of leaf litter. In addition to bugs, centipedes, millipedes, spiders and woodlice, this also yielded abundant springtails. There were a number of Entomobrya multifasciata, mostly juveniles surprisingly, as well as other juvenile Entomobrya spp. whose identity I could not be sure of. I was a bit surprised to see such a juvenile population at this time of year. I also found a single Sminthurinus aureus (form maculatus - bilateral comma-shaped spots), a species I have recorded at this location previously, although then in the more typical golden form:




The standouts were good numbers of Dicyrtomina species. It is unusual for me to find them all in the same sample, this points to their abundance in leaf litter at present.