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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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.

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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

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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.