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.

April 18, morning

2017 April 18 morning

 

   This morning’s posting is exclusively devoted to the Class Arachnida – a wide range of them: spiders, a tick hard at work, a mite, and even a false scorpion!  There will probably be another posting this evening with more familiar creatures.

 

   Two spiders.  One with an eggsac, moving fast over the hills, west of the Sooke River, photographed by Rosemary Jorna, April 17.  And a tiny money spider  (3.5 mm, not including legs) from Quick’s Bottom, April 17, photographed by Jeremy Tatum.

 

Female wolf spider Pardosa (maybe vancouveri) (Ara.: Lycosidae)  Rosemary Jorna

Money spider (Ara.: Linyphiidae)  Jeremy Tatum

 

Here is a photograph of a tick hard at work on Rosemary Jorna on the Sooke Hills, April17.

 

 Western Black-legged Tick Ixodes pacificus (Acari: Ixodidae)  Rosemary Jorna

 

And here is a velvet mite, also photographed by Rosemary in the Sooke Hills, April 17.

Thanks to Heather Proctor for the identification.

 

Red mite (Acari:  Trombidioidea – probably Trombidiidae)

 

This morning, April 18, in Metchosin, Rosemary Jorna photographed a false scorpion reading the latest news about Senator Rubio and President Trump.

 

 False scorpion (Order Pseudoscorpiones)  Rosemary Jorna