This blog provides an informal forum for terrestrial invertebrate watchers to post recent sightings of interesting observations in the southern Vancouver Island region. Please send your sightings by email to Jeremy Tatum (tatumjb352@gmail.com). Be sure to include your name, phone number, the species name (common or scientific) of the invertebrate you saw, location, date, and number of individuals. If you have a photograph you are willing to share, please send it along. Click on the title above for an index of past sightings.The index is updated most days.

2023 March 15

2023 March 15

 

    Butterfly!   Ron Flower reports a Mourning Cloak along the Pike Lake power line today.  This is the second butterfly of the year reported to Invert Alert.  The first was on February 21 – also a Mourning Cloak.

 

Here are an earthworm and a snout mite photographed yesterday by Ian Cooper:

 

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Common Earthworm  Lumbricus terrestris (Hap.: Lumbricidae)  Ian Cooper

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Snout mite  (Acari: Bdellidae)  Ian Cooper

   And another collection of invertebrates photographed last night by Ian Cooper in *Colquitz
River Park or along the #Galloping Goose Trail in View Royal.

 

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#Snout mite  (Acari: Bdellidae)  Ian Cooper

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#Snout mite  (Acari: Bdellidae) with prey.  Ian Cooper

 

 

 

 

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*Common RoughWoodlouse – Porcellio scaber (Isopoda: Porcellionidae)

  Ian Cooper

 

 

 

 

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*Male (left) and female (right) linyphiid spiders  (Ara.; Linyphiidae)

  Ian Cooper

 

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*Springtail Orchesella cincta (Coll.: Orchesellidae)    Ian Cooper

 

 

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#Globose springtail, possibly Ptenothrix sp. (Coll.: Dicyrtomidae)    Ian Cooper

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Soil Centipede – Order Geophilomorpha    Ian Cooper

 

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Barklouse  Ectopsocus californicus (Psocodea:  Ectopsocidae)

  Ian Cooper