INVERTEBRATE ALERT
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.

March 18

2017 March 18

 

   Ian sends a bunch of very-challenging-to-identify invertebrates from Sidney Island today.

 

We are grateful to Charlene Wood for identifying the creature below as a Bristly Millipede.  Charlene writes:  I doubt that these are thoroughly known for our area.  Of the six species documented north of Mexico, Polyxenus lagurus is the most common and widespread.

 

 

Bristly Millipede.  Class Diplopoda, Subclass Penicillata, Order Polyxenida
Probably Polyxenus lagurus (Pol.: Polyxenidae)
Ian Cruickshank

Jeremy Tatum thinks that the next one might be a caterpillar of a noctuid – perhaps even noctuine – moth.

 

 

Noctuid caterpillar?   Ian Cruickshank

   The third one might also be a noctuid caterpillar, but I’m not 100 percent certain that it isn’t a beetle grub!

 

Possibly another noctuid.  Ian Cruickshank

 

Jeremy Tatum continues: The last one looks, on the face of it, to be the most obscure and impossible to identify, but we’re in luck.  It is a gall on Broom, and we think it might be the mite Aceria genistae.   That’s tentative at the moment, while we await the opinion of an expert.  Apparently there are lots of these galls on the Broom on Sidney Island.

 

 Possibly Aceria genistae (Acari:  Eriophyidae)   Ian Cruickshank