#550 - Sminthurid Springtails
Photo by Michael Deegan
Commonly known as Globular Springtails.
I’d been hoping for another jewel beetle for this landmark, but what the hell :) I was visiting a friend out in the NW of Perth, and poking about her garden. She’s an avid amateur naturalist herself, and most of our mutual friends at least sympathize, so when I yelled “I’ve found a centipede!” most of them came out to have a look. As well as the tiny centipede, there were these little buggers, possibly the tiniest animals I’ve identified for the blog yet. How tiny?
It’s just as well Michael was there with his own camera - my phone just wouldn’t have cut it.
The ten genera of Globular Springtails are in what is now known as the Order Symphypleona. This was formerly a suborder, when Springtails were still included among the true insects.
The entire subclass Collembola is still included in the Class Entognatha (bearing internal mouthparts, unlike true Insecta), although it’s now realised that while Collembola, Diplurans, Proturans (and the Insecta, forming the larger subphylum of Hexapoda) all possess six legs, that each of the four lineages evolved that hexapody independently, and may not, in fact, be closely related,