Springtail families AIDGAP
This AIDGAP guide in the fold-out guide style is an illustrated key to the families of Collembola in Britain.
- Quick visual guide to the families of springtails
- Designed for living specimens
- Illustrated with line drawings and colour images throughout
Many naturalists regard the Collembola as a difficult group. It is certainly true that putting a name to a springtail is harder than naming a butterfly. Nevertheless, for those with a little patience, identification of most Collembola is reasonably straightforward. Their study is not restricted to the normal entomological season, and at least some adult specimens can be found in every month of the year.
The advent of improved hand lenses, field microscopes and macro digital photography has removed some of the difficulties in identification. Despite all this, the number of species of springtails is still daunting. So the purpose of this guide is to provide a more gentle introduction to the major groups.
Although not as detailed as Hopkin (2007), the authors hope that this guide will encourage more recording of these tiny but vital animals. In most terrestrial ecosystems Collembola occur at densities of between 10,000 and 100,000 per square metre. They are certainly among the most abundant arthropods on earth, if perhaps not the most obvious.
The most obvious feature of Collembola is the jumping organ, or furca. It can propel some species many times their own body length in a fraction of a second. The spring evolved as an escape mechanism to avoid predators. Species of Collembola confined to the soil have a reduced furca to ease their movement between soil particles and tightly packed leaf litter. Some have lost the jumping organ altogether, and are therefore effectively ‘spring-less springtails’.
This Springtails families guide is part of the Field Studies Council’s AIDGAP series (Aids to Identification in Difficult Groups of Animals and Plants).