Esporles and other areas

Last Sunday I had a great day with some colleagues, and later in the day we went for a walk I am not the only insect/bug nut around here so we brought the camera to have a look. As I have said I is still quite early in the season but I still found some cool subjects. Viewers’ discretion is advised. It is springtime and that can only mean one thing...well several things, but this as well.

Locusta migratoria; a lot of reasearch is done on this Migratory locust.  Here we see the male and female. Female is the larger one. 

Carabidae and probably also a Carabus. With a little help and expert consult:

Carabus (Macrothorax) morbillosus

Esporles is as I mentioned where I work. It is a little town in a valley with a "torrente" meaning a river with only water when it rains. The geology of Mallorca is porous so when the rain comes it runs down and collects very fast into these rivers. It is also surrounded with mountains for walking in and discovering cool things. After work then a group of us took a trip walking up one of these mountains. It has a statue of Jesus on top (welcome to Spain) with one arm disproportionately larger than the other.  Further up there is a small monastery. This is the view we were rewarded on the top of the mountain.   

On the trip I was looking under every rock and looking on every bit of old wood I could come across. I found at least two different species of Isopoda. Another day I will find time to photograph them. One was from the genus Armadillidium. Those are the ones that roll up to an almost perfect ball. Also we found this Diplopoda which I am sure is a Julidae as the family, but I need more literature (keep coming back to that) before I can determine with some certainty. Diplopoda or millipedes belong to the Myriopoda and these are determined by the two paired legs per segment. Some of these secrete hydrogen cyanide as a defense mechanism. This has in some cases backfired as some monkeys rub them on their fur as a mosquito repellent roll-on. A great example of adaptation.   

Diplopoda Julidae

And this one I am kicking myself for not flipping over and make sure but I think this is a Tenebrionidae  after some expert advice. And perhaps it is in the genus Blaps and it might also be the species gigas.

   That is all for now, But I surely will be bringing more posts in the near future. I will soon go for a trip home to Norway so I cannot promise anything for next two weeks. On the other hand I will surely have new material from the trip so stay tuned.

Salticidae special

Last Friday I was walking in the small town here where I work called Esporles. And as I was walking I noticed that there were a lot of Saltisidae in the wall trying to attract mates by the look of things. Some of them had quite enlarged pedipalps, This is where they store the sperm when they are ready to mate. I went back later with my camera to see what I could find. All of these are Salticidae, or jumping spiders. This is because they don’t hunt by web, but by jumping to attack the prey. They often have quite small abdomens/ophistosoma as well as strong legs for jumping. They have wonderful eyesight and have no problem detecting a huge camera lens in front of them. Curiosity sometimes helps a cameraman here as they will investigate. And especially the flash they seem to react to. But they are very small no more than 5 mm most of them. One, the last one here was above one cm and that is why it was the best photo object at this time. It also helped that it stayed in the sun for better lighting. All pictures were taken with my Canon D400 camera and a canon 60mm macro lens. I have had it for some years and i still love this lens. When it comes to determenig these ones i really need some litterature and more time. At least it should be possible to determine them to genus.