Leaf Litter Staphylinids 2: Electric Boogaloo

I finished sorting through the rest of my Staphylinid samples today, over 50 samples in all. They're making more sense to me now, and soon I'll identify the morphospecies to their actual species. I feel confident about identifying a few more subfamilies now, including Osoriinae, Omaliinae, and Paederinae, of which the Osoriinae are the coolest.

Next I'll move onto either the ants, spiders, or centipedes. Probably the centipedes. For now, here are some more Staphylinid photos from my phone.

Scydmaeninae and Pselaphinae in the center, with Staphylininae (I think) surrounding them.

Three Pselaphinae boxed in by three Paederinae.

Tachypodinae, the crab-like rove beetles, surrounding Aleocharinae (?)

Leaf Litter Staphylinids

Back in June, I was collecting a lot of leaf litter for a small sampling project. I was trying to determine if collecting litter at different times over 24 hours would result in different groups of arthropods being collected at different abundances, and I've been sorting through the samples since then.

I'm about halfway done, and I'm now working on the Staphylinidae in my samples. Staphylinids are rove beetles, and they're the most numerous insect family, which makes them a bit intimidating. For now I'm sorting them down to subfamily, and they've proven to be pretty interesting. I'm excited to delve deeper into the family so I can identify the common species I'm collecting, and in pursuit of that goal, I took some photos today.

Most of the species I've seen so far have been in the subfamilies Tachyporinae, Staphylininae, Pselaphinae, and Scydmaeninae. They're common in my samples, but I've also seen a few others like Osoriinae and Steninae, which are a bit barrel-shaped or have huge eyes.

Since I don't too much info on all these groups yet, I'll leave you with the rest of the photos I snapped today so you get an idea for the various shapes Staphylinids take. I'm excited to see what else I find as I finish sorting these samples!

 

Fluorescent Millipedes? Sweet!

Just a quick post here to highlight one of the more interesting things I've found lately: millipedes that glow under UV light. I've been busy with my Investigative Studies Project, Capstone, and other related endeavors, so I'm essentially stockpiling a lot of photos and information for blog posts during winter, when I won't be finding nearly as much arthropod stuff.

You think you have to go to the rainforest to find neat stuff? HA!

I took a UV flashlight out to the field a few weeks ago and looked through the leaf litter--it was crawling with these many-legged critters. I could barely contain myself, it was just so neat. There were a few species fluorescing under the light, which is a result of a chemical in their exoskeleton, and the fluorescence was at bright as firefly bioluminescence. 

The millipedes were a nice size, hovering around one inch, and had chemical defenses. I grabbed a few to hold in my hand and could smell a slightly sweet scent on my palm after I returned them to the leaf litter. Chemical defenses, UV fluorescence....will millipedes ever stop being exciting? Nope.

Update (Jan 7, 2012): This millipede is Semionellus placidus, which is in a tribe that occurs mostly in the Northwest of North America. I'll try to gather more information and put that together for another post.

One of my next projects? Research the relationship between assassin bugs of a certain subfamily (Ectrichodiinae) and millipedes. Why? Some species in this subfamily are known to be millipede hunters. Maybe this holds true for our local species as well. The only genus around here in the subfamily Ectrichodiinae is Rhiginia, and I had the pleasure of finding the species Rhiginia cruciata during early summer. That gives me a good six months to prepare. Perhaps the millipedes have some dangerous predators to watch out for.

Scarlet-bordered assassin bug, Rhiginia cruciata. Millipede hunter?