Collembola
EOL Text
Collecting: You can find springtails by carefully turning over bark, checking along the edges of ponds, and of course, almost anywhere organic matter is present. Collembola should be preserved in 70% ethyl alcohol. They may also be slide mounted for species level identification.
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| Rights holder/Author | ©1995-2012, The Regents of the University of Michigan and its licensors |
| Source | http://www.biokids.umich.edu/critters/Collembola/ |
There are at least 6500 species in this group. They occur worldwide. Seven familiies of Collembola occur in North America north of Mexico.
Biogeographic Regions: nearctic (Native ); palearctic (Native ); oriental (Native ); ethiopian (Native ); neotropical (Native ); australian (Native ); antarctica (Native ); oceanic islands (Native )
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| Rights holder/Author | ©1995-2012, The Regents of the University of Michigan and its licensors |
| Source | http://www.biokids.umich.edu/critters/Collembola/ |
The springtails are soft-bodied, oval or roundish shaped, primitive insects. Their bodies are made up of six or fewer segments and they lack wings. Although many species have small eyes, some are nearly or totally blind. Their antennae are segmented. They occur in a range of colors including whitish, yellowish, brown, gray, bluish, or black, and they may be mottled.
Collembola have biting mouthparts that are entognathous. That is, the mouthparts are mostly retracted into the head. Some springtails have mandibles with well-developed molars. Others are fluid feeders, having stylet-like mouthparts. For these springtails, on the ventral side of the first abdominal segment, there is a tube-like structure called a collophore. This structure is the site of water uptake.
A forked structure or furcula is located on the ventral side of the fourth abdominal segment. This structure is used to propel Collembola through the air. A springtail that is 3 to 6 mm long can leap 75 to 100 mm. When a springtail is at rest, the furcula is held in place by a clasp-like structure called the retinaculum that is located on the third abdominal segment.
Range length: 2.0 to 12.0 mm.
Other Physical Features: ectothermic ; bilateral symmetry
Sexual Dimorphism: sexes alike
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| Rights holder/Author | ©1995-2012, The Regents of the University of Michigan and its licensors |
| Source | http://www.biokids.umich.edu/critters/Collembola/ |
Collection Sites: world map showing specimen collection locations for Collembola
Springtails are mainly soil animals. They can be found in soil, leaf litter, fungi, caves, under snow fields, under the bark of trees, and decaying logs. In addition, they can be found on the surface of freshwater pools, along seashores, on vegetation, and in the nests of termites and ants.
Springtails can be found in extremely high numbers in a small area of soil or other organic material. For example, 100,000 springtails can be found per square meter of surface soil.
Habitat Regions: temperate ; tropical ; polar ; terrestrial ; freshwater
Terrestrial Biomes: tundra ; taiga ; desert or dune ; chaparral ; forest ; rainforest ; scrub forest ; mountains
Aquatic Biomes: coastal
Wetlands: marsh ; swamp
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| Rights holder/Author | ©1995-2012, The Regents of the University of Michigan and its licensors |
| Source | http://www.biokids.umich.edu/critters/Collembola/ |
Occasionally, springtails cause damage in gardens, greenhouses, and mushroom cellars.
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| Rights holder/Author | ©1995-2012, The Regents of the University of Michigan and its licensors |
| Source | http://www.biokids.umich.edu/critters/Collembola/ |
Although many species are herbivorous, others are carnivorous feeding on other springtails, nematodes and other small arthropods. Those springtails living in leaf litter and soil usually feed on fungi, plant material, feces and algae.
| License | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ |
| Rights holder/Author | ©1995-2012, The Regents of the University of Michigan and its licensors |
| Source | http://www.biokids.umich.edu/critters/Collembola/ |
Collembola are important for enrichment of soil.
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| Rights holder/Author | ©1995-2012, The Regents of the University of Michigan and its licensors |
| Source | http://www.biokids.umich.edu/critters/Collembola/ |
The Collembola fauna function lead us to formation of soil (nutrient cicling) and to feeding habit on litter, clay, fungi, bacteria, and other taxa, even the same taxa, sometimes cited as pantophagous because of this.
The diversity of fungi found in the natural soil was 33 times higher than that in the guts of the collembolan Protaphorura armata (Jørgensen et al., 2005).
Collembolans can preferentially select certain taxa of fungi when feeding in soils, and on the other hand, studies have also indicated that collembolans have an opportunistic feeding behaviour; available resources in the immediate proximity of the animals rather than the specific distributed resources are ingested (Ponge, 2000).
At a lower depth (2–4 cm) springtails ate mainly fungal material, hemorganic and holorganic humus. Gut contents of the species living at the lowest depth were mostly composed of mycorrhizae and higher plant material. In particular, holorganic humus and fungal material dominated the food bolus in bulked Collembola, even in animals found in the first top 2 cm (Ponge, 2000).
Some studies have shown that Collembola prefer saprophytic and pathogenic to mycorrhizal fungi and, among saprophytic fungi, actively metabolizing to senescent mycelia. Feeding of Collembola on active mycorrhiza would be expected to decrease plant growth by inhibiting nutrient uptake. However, if Collembola feed primarily on low vitality and dead mycelia that have already been severed from the plant, this could have a positive effect on plant growth, because of enhanced nutrient release from senescent and dead mycelia (Kaneda and Kaneko, 2004).
- Jørgensen, H.B., Johansson, T., Hedlund, K., Tunlid, A., 2005. Selective foraging of fungi by collembolans in soil. Biology Letters 1, 243-246.
- Ponge, J.-F., 2000. Vertical distribution of Collembola (Hexapoda) and their food resources in organic horizons of beech forests. Biology and Fertility of Soils 32, 508-522.
Kaneda, S., Kaneko, N., 2004. The feeding preference of a collembolan (Folsomia candida Willem) on ectomycorrhiza (Pisolithus tinctorius (Pers.)) varies with mycelial growth condition and vitality. Applied Soil Ecology 27, 1-5.
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| Rights holder/Author | Allysson Allan Farias, Allysson Allan Farias |
| Source | No source database. |