Thousand Tiny Heartbeats
So, welcome to another edition of Nature on the Hoof, a wee slice of life in and around the Vale of Leven. As usual, I’ll be walking and shooting wildlife, with a camera, of course... but this time, I’ll be looking down rather than up.
I won’t go too far down into the soil itself because I’d have to up my number a bit if I did that...
In a mere square meter of soil you can find as much as a trillion bacteria, a billion protozoa (single called living organisms), 5 million nematodes (tiny worms), about a 100,000 mites, 50,000 springtails, 10,000 rotifiers (microscopic wheel animals that live in the film of water that surrounds soil particles) and the same number of tardigrades (known as water bears or moss piglets - they are also microscopic water dwellers but with eight legs)... What great name for a band - The Moss Piglets!
Anyway, I’ll stick to the things I can capture with a macro lens not a microscope... There will still be about 5,000 insects, myriapods, spiders and diplurans (blind, two-pronged bristle-tails with large antennae), in that square meter, and an additional 100 slugs, snails and earthworms... oh and maybe even a mole, vole or shrew...
But let me be even more specific or we could do a whole BBC nature series just on that... Mmm...? Come think of it...
I’m going to concentrate on two little guys. One found in cuckoo spit and the other more of an adventurer, who hitches rides on bumble bees.
Meadow Froghopper Nymph
Let’s start with Cuckoo spit. Have you ever seen a little clump of bubbles on a blade of grass that looks a bit like someone has just...well you know, gobbed on the ground? Well, inside that cluster of white foam there’s a little insect. It’s the larval stage or nymph of a Froghopper. The one I’ve found, literally in my back garden, is the Meadow Froghopper.
The tiny yellow nymph has produced this mass of wet bubbles around it to keep it moist and to hide it from predators. Ingenious. Under its protective shield it feeds on the juices of the grass using its rostrum, a kind of tubular mouthpart that is common to all members of its animal order - Hemiptera. Other members include aphids, shield bugs and, I’m afraid to say, Bed bugs. The soft Froghopper larva will eventually develop wings and a more robust little body before flying off to pastures new.
Parasitellus fucorum - Bumble Bee Mite
The other little creature I want to talk about are bubble bee mites. Very difficult to photograph, because of their tiny size, and the speed of their carriers, I found this one when I rescued a drowning bumble bee from our pond. Clinging on for dear life, this orange mite was hanging on to a wing tip, like the last passenger of the Titanic.
These mites use bumble bees like buses. They move from flower to flower on the backs of their winged chariots spreading their species all over the garden and even journeying into the bumble bee hives. They can get onto a bumble bee pretty quickly, in about three seconds in fact. They can’t afford to muck about. Then they’re off...and, as I said, sometimes go right into the hive. Bumble bees tend to nest under ground in burrows where a 100 or so tend to their queen and her young.
The Mites don’t tend to do the colony any harm, mainly feeding on discarded bits of wax, detritus and the rubbish that litters the hive. They only become a problem when too many try to hitch a ride at the same time and restrict the bumble bee’s flying capabilities.
A world within a world, or what?
Rhododendron stamens.
The third picture in this particular set reminds me of some sci-fi landscape but is actually the pollen producing stamens of a Rhododendron. The plant obviously depends on creatures like bumble bees to spread its pollen from flower to flower but there’ a twist in the tale here. The rhododendron nectar, the reward that temps the bees into the flower in the first place, is toxic. And it seems that only bumble bees are unaffected. Well, I say that, but there is some evidence that the nectar makes the bumble bees really keen on lots of repeat visits to the rhododendron flowers.
Normally, honey bees and even miner bees will be killed by the intoxicating nectar. It’s as if the plant has decided which species of bee it wants.
As a wee aside, this poison, a bit like caffeine in structure was used as one of the worlds first ever biological warfare agents.
When the Romans were invading what is now Turkey, King Mithridates VI of Pontus, an early experimentalist with natural poisons, put toxic honeycombs of bees that had been foraging on Rhododendron along the roadside in advance of the invading army of Pompey the Great. This was in 65BCE. The Roman garrison, not recognising the danger, enthusiastically scoffed the lot and unwittingly poisoned themselves in the process.
Stupefied by the toxin, they were slaughtered by Mithridates who were lying in wait.
Grey Sailor Beetle
The forth picture is of a Grey Sailor Beetle. The soldier beetle, a close relative, got its name after early entomologists decided its reddish wing covers reminded them of British Red Coats, so I reckon the Sailor beetles were named in a similar fashion, due to their more Navy-like attire. Both species feed on insect larvae and aphids but will also take nectar and pollen, so you’ll often find them in your garden.
Tree Bumble Bee
The last picture in this set is of a Tree Bumble Bee feeding on Rhododendron nectar. So, a bit of a link to other stories. Tree Bumble bees are really quick at going from flower to flower. Less than three seconds, so I didn’t see as many mites on them, and they were a nightmare to focus in on. I only really homed in this one’s antennae but I love the overall shot. It has a faerie-like quality.
For all these shots I used my Raynox DCR 250 macro attachment lens, that clips onto my camera in seconds. I generally use flash too, to sharpen the shots up.