These unspeakably small (~3mm) jumping spiders are full grown! and unimaginably cute. Without looking through the camera’s macro lens, I can only barely tell there is a small moving speck on the wooden boardwalk rail — I cannot imagine locating one of these on, say, tree bark. Despite being adorable, these poor things suffer from…
Tag: tiny
Attidops cinctipes (Jumping Spider)
The minuscule size of this spider is difficult to convey — I thought it was a lint ball until it moved and tried to pounce on a springtail (which was bigger than it was, to give you an idea of scale). Attidops cinctipes, no common name, is a well-camouflaged and extremely tiny jumping spider which…
Stimulopalpus japonicus (Bark Louse)
This insect was so tiny in person that I was not entirely sure it was an insect. My eyes could only pick up a small, moving white dot. Once “blown up” through the camera lens, I saw…what was that? It looks kind of like a baby grasshopper or cricket, except the legs are wrong for…
Tumbling Flower Beetle
This beetle is so tiny (approximately 2-3mm long) that I wasn’t even sure it was an insect when I snapped its photo. This minuscule insect is a tumbling flower beetle, or pintail beetle, in the family Mordellidae. These beetles all share the long, pointed abdomen extending past the elytra, the bent-over posture with the angle…
Frogfruit
Ah, the lengths to which I have gone in order to write a post entitled “Frogfruit”. This, er, eccentrically-named plant is also called capeweed, matchweed, and turkey tangle fogfruit, probably not by the same people. It is described as “interesting foliage” by the Florida Native Plant Society. The flower has a spherical purple center (a…
Bothriocera Cognita
This tiny, black and white spotted cixiid planthopper does not seem to have a common name. Bothiocera cognita is about 3-5mm long, and appears to range through the southeastern US. Other than that, it’s a nondescript little planthopper, without even a Wikipedia entry. Planthoppers, in general, live on, and eat plants, eating the roots as…
Slender Meadow Katydid Nymph
This is not an adult; it’s a mid-range instar (aka nymph, aka baby). You can tell because it has no wings — adults have long, reddish wings which extend past the end of their body. In a couple more molts/instars, the wings will emerge! This tiny little creature (about 5mm long) took a ride on…
Eastern Green Grass Springtail
This is an entirely new genus for me — and family — and class! These tiny little insects (only about 2mm long) are very common, but also extremely small, and they like to hide under decaying plant and animal matter so we don’t really see them much. This is the eastern green grass springtail, or…
Bristly Millipede
This one led me a merry chase through “first instar caterpillar”, “bagworm” and even “beetle larva” until finally an article about dermestid beetle larvae turned up a photo of a duff millipede. This is a millipede! Would you believe it? This extremely tiny (3mm) creature looks, at first glance, like a piece of lint. Getting…
Eastern Black Swallowtail
This is a newly hatched baby eastern black swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes). It’s only about 6mm long, practically invisible on this plant. By the time it’s ready to become a butterfly, it will have molted four or more times, and will be about four inches long (see photo below)! The white spot on its back is…
Wall Spider
I needed help with this one (thank you, /r/spiders!). At 2.5mm long, there weren’t a lot of details to go on! This petite lady is an adult female wall spider (Oecobius navus, very probably), and isn’t she darling? She’s sitting on my pillowcase, to give you a sense of scale. Other than being tiny and…
Greenhouse Frog
To get an idea of how big this frog isn’t, check out the dead bee over on the right side of the photo. This tiny frog is only about 20mm long!