In the leaf litter

December 7, 2014 • 7:27 am

by Matthew Cobb

This delightful French film takes us onto the forest floor, focusing particularly on the arthropods that live there. It lasts only 5 minutes, and is well worth watching. Non-francophones needn’t worry: there’s no French commentary, just a few captions which you can either ignore or try and decipher.

Here’s the challenge: post below the common names of *all* the animals you can see (and that includes the vertebrates and molluscs), along with any interesting facts you know about the animal in question.

Here’s a helping hand: the main animals we see are springtails or Collembola. These are not insects, even though they have three pairs of legs…

h/t @Ibycter

31 thoughts on “In the leaf litter”

  2. Many of the springtails were the ultra-cute ‘globular springtails’. Springtails get their name from being able to jump with a flick of a springy tail folded under their abdomen.

  3. Naming all of them IS a challenge, but here (without looking anything up) this can get us started:
    Quite a diversity of entomomobryid and sminthuroid collembolans in there.
    A couple of families of mites (one is Oribatidae, the other maybe a tetranychid), a phalangid, some pseudoscorpions, a hunting spider (maybe anyphaenid), a crab spider (Thomisidae), and a baby orbweaver (Araneidae) are the arachnids I noted.
    The yellow writhing critters are fungus gnat larvae (Sciaridae). The one other insect I saw was an acron weevil (Curculio).
    Gastropods, schmastropods!
    Vertebrates: (maybe) European robin, red deer, and wild boar – Sus scrofa.
    Pretty sure a few of these are wrong or incomplete. Bring on the corrections and completions!

  4. Some of the French – With or without wings present a walk in the heart of the forest litter. Springtails are among the animals participating in the recycling of organic matter “decomposers”. The arachnids of the forestry litter principally feed on insects and springtails.

  5. At 4:18: “We search far and wide for new sights to contemplate; what is right under our noses is inexhaustible.”

    Not directly, but I think that’s the spirit of it. Formidable!

  6. Nobody has mentioned Pseudo-scorpions. These are supposed to be common but I have never seen one.

    2. I remember when I was about 10 and I saw my first of these. Living in Iowa I had no idea that I might see something very much like a scorpion. I was totally thrilled.

  7. Even the spiders looked cute on this film!

    I liked the bits where the one creature is cleaning its antenna! 🙂

  8. By far the greatest ‘giant monster’ movie of old, imo, is the 1957 movie The Black Scorpion. This used to scare and delight the crap out of me when I was a kid. It was made when the effects of atomic radiation was a plot point for many sci fi movies.

    The underground battle sequence has a phalangid and a pseudoscorpion, but unfortunately those are not shown in this cut scene. Some stills of the pseudoscorpion are here.

    And the movie trailer…

  9. I’ve not commented before, but I loved this little film that shows how beautiful (yes, beautiful!) these little creatures are. Also, I couldn’t resist trying to name them all. I don’t think anyone has mentioned the other bird (shown very briefly after the robin flies away), a tit, possibly a willow tit. The snail looks like one of the “true” glass snails, family Zonitidae. I think that there were two weevils, not just one. James Trager pointed out an acorn weevil, which I think is the one with the loooooong snout at 2:41. I could be mistaken, but I think there is another weevil at 2:00 with a shorter snout. The only creature that I didn’t recognize (at least in a very general way) was the fungus gnat larva–didn’t have a clue on that one!

  10. The bird that apppears after the robin (European Robin Erithacus rubecula not the unrelated American kind!) is either a Marsh Tit (Poecile palustris)or a Willow Tit (Poecile montanus). It is hard to tell as it is such a fleeting glimpse but I think Marsh Tit which has a narrower black bib.

    1. And everybody forget to mention the singing birds: the cuckoo (nicely set in the beginning of the soundtrack), the common blackbird, and the willow warbler. Perhaps additional ones in the background, but it is difficult to be sure.
      Thanks to James Trager and S.J. Heineman for their identifications – and now, I have to study these fungus gnats a bit, I didn’t go farther than Diptera…

      1. I think Wren is the main other main background song – you can hear the loud trills a number of times.

  11. Interesting fact about pseudoscorpions is that they have venom glands in their claws or pedipalps. In Mammoth Cave National Park we recognize two genera: Kleptochthonius (cave-adapted) and Hesperochernes (“surface” adapted).

  13. Love the film. I can never get enough of the safaris right under our noses.

    Couldn’t stand the music, though, so I turned the sound down and put on Vangelis Soil Festivities which seemed apropos.

  14. What outstanding macro-videography!

    I was especially taken by the spiny collembolan and the pseudoscorpions.

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