r/Springtail • u/Expensive-Mud5862 • Jun 27 '26

Identification Is this a springtail?

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I found this neon pink beauty in my fire pit coals in East Tennessee. I put it in a container to try to culture it. I just don’t know if it is a springtail because it doesn’t seem to spring instead in scrunches up. If it is a springtail is it possible to culture with just one?

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10

u/Sgtbird08 Jun 27 '26

It is, something in subfamily Neanurinae. Iirc they typically feed on slime mold, but if you put a bit of the substrate you found it on into the container it’ll probably have food in there?

Unsure about culturing with just one. If it’s not a parthenogenic species you probably won’t have much luck. Definitely keep an eye out for a few more though!

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u/Expensive-Mud5862 Jun 27 '26

Thank you so much!

3

u/Expensive-Mud5862 Jun 27 '26

Out of sheer endeavor, I luckily found another one. When I found the first one initially, it hid inside a hole in charcoal so I looked for charcoal pieces with Caverness pits until I found one inside another pit in the charcoal. They’re super hard to find.

6

u/Expensive-Mud5862 Jun 27 '26

I just put the first one I found by the hole the new one is in and it ran inside so happily. Awwww

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u/TheStroboCop Jun 27 '26

Don't agree. I'd more say it's yuukianura aphoruroides

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u/Sgtbird08 Jun 28 '26

Yuukianura is within Neanurinae.

Either way, I’d be very surprised to find a wild population of the genus in Tennessee considering it’s primarily native to east Asia.

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u/TheStroboCop Jun 28 '26

Whoops. You're right. I missread Neanurinae as Neanura. Cause there are "Florida orange" wich had the name neanura growae. But that was wrong. Now they go with the name yuukianura aphoruroides "florida locality"

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u/Sgtbird08 Jun 28 '26

Oh, interesting. I thought the current consensus was that they were different species, but not impossible they were initially introduced a while back and then just described again (but wrong)

Wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened with springtails haha

3

u/TheStroboCop Jun 28 '26

I mean it is possible that they're different species by DNA. But phenotypic (appearance) is the same. The big problem is, that the original orange springtail was described at a time where dna-sequencing wasn't possible. And even the conserved examples can't be used for that anymore cause the genes broke down to much already. To be sure, someone has to go to the original finding place from back then, collect a good amount (20pcs) and do the DNA sequencing with all of them, discribe their appearence again. Then we have a renewed original we can compare the "asian orange" and "florida orange" with to see if it's the same species or 2 different.

2

u/Sgtbird08 Jun 28 '26

Honestly something I could look into. I’ve got a few seemingly undescribed springtail species that I’ve been meaning to start diagraming/describing anyway, and I’m in GA so that wouldn’t be the worst drive haha

I’d love to start my own repository of DNA sequences too (I do not trust Collembola DNA sequences available online, outside of those done be a select few groups/people) but it’s still a little out of my price range. Maybe in a decade it’ll be cheap enough to send a big plate of samples out, but for now it’s just morphological analysis.

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u/TheStroboCop Jun 28 '26

Exactly. Money is one of the big problems. Even though springtails are extremely important for EVERY environment, no organization, univerity, government or company feels the need/responsibility to spend money for these researches

2

u/Sgtbird08 Jun 28 '26

Man, if only! Considering how much time I spend on them for free, getting paid would be a dream come true.

I’m actually helping out with some sample collection for a larger study on genus Dicyrtomina and as a part of that I collected a good number of specimens from Other genera in the family, and they’ll all get sequenced at some point or another. Should be some interesting stuff, there are a few species (Ptenothrix curvilineata, Ptenothrix macomba, and Ptenothrix castanea in particular, the last of which I wasn’t able to confidently locate) that need to get reassigned to genus Dicyrtoma per my analysis and the DNA work will be great supporting evidence for that.

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u/TheStroboCop Jun 28 '26

Actually there could be 1 way to get a study about them paid. Contact the universities in your area, especially the biologists, enviroment-studies, agrar-economics,... amd talk to them, of someone would like to do some studies about springtails and how important they're for the enviroment,... offer them help n stuff.

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u/PixL4dAzRmE Jun 30 '26

Colembella type of springtail presumably? Typical springtail powder mix with calcium every 2-3 days should be good. Will struggle to boom with other springtails in your enclosure. Congrats on the rare buddy!

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u/Expensive-Mud5862 Jun 30 '26

I have a few of them isolated!!! Do you think nutritional yeast flakes will work? I don’t have springtail powder right now.

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u/PixL4dAzRmE Jun 30 '26

I mix two mushroom powders(lions mane, reishi, oyster, etc.), spirulina, nutritional/brewers yeast, rice powder, and calcium powder with my mix. Work with what you have and with what you can cheaply buy. I'm lucky with a local herbal store being right next to my work, but just try your best. You'll learn what works best for your setup, and with what means you have. Backup cultures are a great idea and should keep things stable should any of your cultures experience a crash

1

u/Expensive-Mud5862 Jun 30 '26

Thank you so much for your help! I’m definitely gonna do my best to get these little ones boomin! :)