Springtails (collembola)

I was at a springtail (collembola) workshop at Edge Hill University today. It was to test a new key to springtails which will be published shortly and will help people to identify them to family.

I've worked with springtails before from the Ribble, but only with dead specimens. Today we collected live specimens from the leaf litter at Edge Hill, and it was a delight to watch them through a binocular microscope, charging around a petri dish. All of the photos below are from Edge Hill apart from the last.

The appendage which allows the springtail to "spring" is known as the furca and looks like a tail when the animal is dead, but in life it is tucked under the springtails body, ready for action should the creature be threatened. Springtails also have a ventral tube, which is on their tummy (the first abdominal segment) and is used to help regulate water and for self-righting when the springtail is upside down.

There can be up to 2 million individuals per cubic metre of soil.


Dicyrtomina minuta (yellowish with a black spot) and Orchisella villosa (the large brown hairy one). Dicyrtomina minuta is about 1.5mm long.


Dicyrtomina saundersi from above, with the furca extended behind like a tail, and from below with the furca tucked under the body in the "ready to spring" position.


Orchisella villosa with Dicyrtomina saundersi, and Dicyrtoma fusca (the purple one).


Tomocerus longicornis from Crossens Marsh, Ribble Estuary.