Pseudoscorpions!
My second day in Montana this summer, Lily and I took a hike in the Gallatin Range, in Leverich Canyon. There, I turned over a boulder of Archean gneiss (bearing a sweet isoclinal fold) and found two little pseudoscorpions:
My apologies for the blurry, pixelated quality of the photos: these guys were small and they moved fast! Each pseudoscorpion was about 3 mm in length. These are the best two photos out of 20 or so that I shot: they were not easy to capture in digital form.
Pseudoscorpions are members of one of my favorite groups of animals: the non-spider arachnids. This is a surprisingly diverse group that includes (Wikipedia links) pseudoscorpions, tailless whip-scorpions, harvestmen, solpugids, and vinegarroons. (Mites and ticks are also arachnids, as well as a host of less common groups both extinct and extant.) I've seen examples of all of them in the wild except for the solpugids. They're really neat creatures, hints of the wide range of biodiversity in the arthropod phylum.
My apologies for the blurry, pixelated quality of the photos: these guys were small and they moved fast! Each pseudoscorpion was about 3 mm in length. These are the best two photos out of 20 or so that I shot: they were not easy to capture in digital form.
Pseudoscorpions are members of one of my favorite groups of animals: the non-spider arachnids. This is a surprisingly diverse group that includes (Wikipedia links) pseudoscorpions, tailless whip-scorpions, harvestmen, solpugids, and vinegarroons. (Mites and ticks are also arachnids, as well as a host of less common groups both extinct and extant.) I've seen examples of all of them in the wild except for the solpugids. They're really neat creatures, hints of the wide range of biodiversity in the arthropod phylum.
Labels: archean, arthropods, montana, structure
1 Comments:
I saw some of these in Shell Canyon in Wyoming last month, underneath a chunk of Bighorn Dolomite. Mine were apparently a different species, though, since they didn't have the red claws. I also got a couple of pictures, but had the same problem--they're tiny, and fast!
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