Exploring underfoot - Suburban backyard, in the moss and leaf litter at the base of the maple tree

I get down on the lawn, zoom my camera in on a patch of moss or leaf litter, and gradually the world around me fades away as my consciousness shrinks down... and down... until the few square inches I'm focused on become a vast universe, and a tiny speck of movement is magnified into something legible -- a springtail crawling across a piece of decaying leaf.

The freeway is still audible, but I don't notice. I'm -- not elsewhere, but in another world. A world that's here, but usually unnoticed. I haven't gone anywhere, yet what I'm seeing is most likely unfamiliar to everyone who passes it.

Like any portal fantasy, stepping through the lens has a permanency. I'll leave this tiny patch of universe. It doesn't even take a step away - just sitting up takes it out of reach. But it won't leave me.

Springtails and moss are just some of the many things I was excited about in my move to Washington. In Los Angeles County, this world sleeps most of the year, except in a few irrigated spots under bushes.

I expect, without a great deal of certainty, that the suburban backyard will host a number of cosmopolitan species. I'm not able to identify springtails to the species level, but I enjoy seeing intricate color patterning on such tiny creatures. I love getting glimpses into their lives.

I did a bit of research in the heat of the Los Angeles summer, dreaming of mossy, springtail-laden forests, and discovered that the communities of springtails at different sites in a forest can be quite variable, both with the elevation and the variety of host plants present. I found a European study that also found that some species were exclusively arboreal. I wonder how much the species in this yard will vary over the course of the year, or from one section of the yard to another. I wonder if I'll find very different springtails in the Olympic rainforests. I wonder if springtails live high up in the moss-covered branches of bigleaf maples.

I love the little critters. They don't seem very popular compared to insects, but I think they're very interesting and ridiculously cute.

Posted on October 31, 2022 06:36 AM by