New Malaysian Springtails!

Interestingly, those Copper-green Perisphaerus sp. from Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia came in with some hitchhikers! 😅 I mean, they came in with several; white worms, a weird little millipede species, but most notably, these decently sized Silver Springtails! 😁 While it's unclear if these are a Malaysian native or not, they're definitely new to US culture, and are proliferating quite well in my Perisphaerus culture to boot! I'm actually seeing them pop up in a few surrounding enclosures as well, so it might only be a matter of time before I have them in every culture of mine. 😂

I emailed springtail scientist extraordinaire, Frans Janssens (creator of the wonderful website Collembola.org), and he tentatively identified them as a species of Willowsia. They very highly resemble the Willowsia buski I used to have in my collection in terms of morphology, they're just almost twice the size, and a much paler silver color (whereas W.buski are bluish silver). So for now, I'll be calling these cf. Willowsia sp. "Kota Kinabalu", with the common name "Malaysian Silver Springtails". 🙂

As for husbandry, these seem to be a simple to keep and prolific species, they like high humidity and seem to also appreciate decent airflow too. They seem to play well with small silvers springtails, but compete with Entomobrya unostrigata in cultures, and can outcompete them in sufficiently humid setups.

Anyways, here are a few pictures I took of them:

Some Malaysian Silvers, alongside Entomobrya

Overall, a nice new addition to my collection and the US springtail hobby as a whole! Speaking of which, if you want some yourself, feel free to check out my For Sale page here! 😉

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While I'm at it, I found babies in my Orchesella cincta enclosure the other day! 😁 They're a dull brown color, but I know they'll gain their beautiful black coloration with the white and yellow highlights soon enough.

Anyways, that's gonna do it for this post, thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, stay safe, and I'll see you all next time! 😉