The Pitfalls of Springtails

For the past few weeks I have been running a pitfall trap in my garden. This is more of an experiment than a serious attempt at systematic recording but one observation has struck me as interesting. I started during a very dry period and at first only found Lepidocyrtus cyaneus and Orchesella cincta. After a week it rained and Tomocerus minor turned up in good numbers, and has remained present every day since. Although it is now raining quite regularly, on one day only there were quite a few Isotomurus unifasciatus in the trap, but they have never reappeared again. Of course, I am only running one trap, but the variability of recovery has been quite surprising - you would need to run quite a number of traps over quite a long period to accurately establish what species were present in a location.