Soil is full of life. Worms, wombats, gophers, ants, underpants, plant roots, rabbits, voles and moles, mushrooms and New Zealand penguins spend a lot if not all of their time within its darkness. And I must say, apart from underpants, I think all these things are wonderful and very cool.

However, these rather visible and obvious soil dwellers live alongside countless billions of far more tiny and far more ancient animals. They are the mesofauna, a collective name that includes soil animals like Collembola, commonly known as springtails, mites, pauropods and diplurans and I love them very much. I mean, just look at this springtail…. Ridiculously sweet and charming.

The mesofauna are so, so much older than mammals, dinosaurs, flowers, trees and insects. And most people have never heard about them, even though they are universally wonderful, and very much beloved by people with great thoughtfulness and taste. As ever, my all time favourite soil animals are springtails, and going on from that, my favourite things in the whole world are springtails too. They’re the best. To be honest, I secretly believe that World Soil Day is actually World Springtail Day.

Anyway, to celebrate World Soil Day, 5 December 2024, I thought it would be nice to share some of the amazing soil animals (and some other small animals that aren’t officially in the mesofauna but live in the same world) I’ve had the pleasure of photographing this year. They are at the heart of a healthy soil, ensuring we have healthy food, a healthy planet and a very happy and obsessive macro photographer.

This is very likely a new species of Holacanthella, a giant springtail endemic to New Zealand, and first discovered by Dr Frank Ashwood, a soil ecologist friend of mine. Holacanthella are an iconic NZ genus with five recorded species. Hopefully 2025 will gain an extra one.

Linipodes are a fungus mite genus that are instantly recognisable by their continually flicking long front legs. They are usually yellow or brown so I tried for a long time to capture this black and white species. Fortunately it got interested in some tree fern sporangia so I was able to take some good shots.

Furry earth mites are a thing, it turns out. All earth mites are fast moving and strongly coloured and basically all legs, supporting a little black ball in the middle. They’re very cool indeed but hard to photograph due to their speed and shape.

Despite their adult form being all bitey and annoying, these larvae are simply beautiful and slow-moving animals, covered in strange bulbous, waxy ‘balloons’. They are slowly turning up in the Southern Hemisphere after being first recorded in Brazil in the 1956, but are terribly understudied so the actual midge species is not known.

This springtail is incredibly bizarre and I have no idea what it is, beyond it looking like a Bourletiellidae of some sort. New Zealand has many new species hidden across the islands, and I suspect this is one of them. It was very exciting to find it although I only got a minute to take photos before it jumped away…

This Phronia species is part of the Mecetophilidae, the fungus gnats and usually lives under a hardened cone of frass. Occasionally they lose their protective ‘shell’ and go travelling naked. And they look absolutely amazing.

Under a rotting piece of wood on a heap of builders rubble and twigs down a track in Tairua in New Zealand, I found a load of baby Holacanthella laterospinosa, a place they really shouldn’t be, as they are a forest species and are very susceptible to logging and ecological damage. And they are the sweetest little things. I was so happy to find them.

A classic Dicyrtomina species. Globular springtails like this one very often have the brightest colours and are very noticeable even with the naked eye, despite them being so tiny. It was raining this day and I was having a frustrating time, not finding anything, until this chap. Well worth the effort…

Symphylans hardly ever stop running so it’s always a challenge to photograph them and frustrating to the extreme. I finally managed a single shot I really liked, which is this one. The dark areas are digesting food in the gut. Another important and tricky issue, especially in a shot like this one, is the flash diffusion, so the background and subject are well lit without being under- or overexposed or with specular highlights. And a lot of the time, the surfaces are shiny and wet, heightening the difficulty even more. It’s always tricky at this level of magnification and something that every macro photographer frets over. So, when it works, like in this shot, it’s wonderful, and makes me really happy.

The Keroplatinae are a subfamily of the Mycetophilidae, the fungus gnats. Their larvae hunt using stiky webbing that they cover in drops of oxalic acid to capture and kill their prey. I’ve never properly photographed the droplets before so was really happy to not only capture them, but also the larva in the process of weaving its webbing.

D. fusca can have such a beautiful blotchy brick red colour, and often stand stock still, meaning that it can be quite easy to take photos. Even though they are really common, I still love to take photographs of them.

Epicypta is another subfamily of the fungus gnats and their terrestrial larvae are really sweet looking as they trundle around the soil and on the underside of logs. Due to their shiny, round shape, they are often difficult to photograph well. Over time, I’ve improved my technique and flash diffusion so these days I’m far happier with the results.

I found this baby Allacma fusca hiding on the underside of a leaf. It made for such a nice photo, and they’re always good subjects for photographs as they are slow-moving and not prone to jumping.

Terrestrial ostracods are peculiar crustaceans that have moved away from their usual home in the ocean and fresh water ponds and climbed onto land. They have bivalves and actually walk on multiple legs, using a film of water to keep them upright. So they are reliant on very wet leaf litter to survive. It was a complete delight to actually get to see and photograph the UK’s only species earlier this year. They’re amazing little animals.