Bugging You From San Juan Island

My short post for the day brings you these interesting little critters that are technically not insects. Taxonomically, they are Arthopods (Phyla) in the Subphylum Hexapoda. If you’re into Etymology, “hex” = 6, and “pod” = foot or leg.

Within the Hexapod group, you will find 3 smaller groups of these wingless organisms: Protura, Diplura, and Collembola. These are Collembolans, the springtails. This particular group of Springtails is in the family Entomobryidae, and I believe most of the species you see here are Entomobrya clitellaria forma albocincta, a name revision suggested per Frans Janssens as found on Bugguide.net https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/272565 There is one Globular Springtail (Ptenothrix beta) that shows up at about 00:43 and the large Slender Springtail showing up about 2:44 is a different species of Entomobrya (Entomobrya triangularis).

I didn’t really want to deep dive much into taxonomy though. Mostly, I wanted you to enjoy watching them as I did. I suspect they are all together here in this varied group to share the food resource, which looks like bird poo to me.

If you watch the video, I think you’ll see the group isn’t always a Hexapod of Hexapods either. At some points, there is a Quartet of Hexapods and at others, you’ll see an Octad of Hexapods. They are quite cute when they thump their antennae in an attempt to move their dining partners enough to edge up to the buffet.

Thanks for reading (and watching)! 🙂

References

Murray, A. 2026. Entomobryomorpha. A Chaos of Delight. https://www.chaosofdelight.org/all-about-collembola-entomobryomorpha

Widenfalk, L. A., H. P. Leinaas, J. Bengtsson, and T. Birkemoe. 2018. Age and level of self-organization affect the small-scale distribution of springtails (Collembola). Ecosphere 9(1):e02058. 10.1002/ecs2.2058 https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1002%2Fecs2.2058