Soil mesofauna photo links

Soil mesofauna are extremely small. You really need a loupe or a magnifying glass to even have a vague chance of looking at them or beginning to appreciate their sheer beauty and charm. A good place to start your search is through photographs.
These photos have been chosen, as far as possible, to best show some of the more important distinguishing features of each class of animals.

Springtails are by far the most colourful of all the soil animals and incredibly varied in shape and character. Some are spiked, soft-looking and multi-coloured. Some are covered in iridescent scales, or covered in long setae. Some species can glow in the dark. Most of the deeper soil springtails, including one of the bioluminescent springtails, Anurida granaria, are sightless and white, providing the often online answer to the question- “What are those white mites and bugs in the soil?”.

Coming up a close second are the shiny round black backs or tank-like forms of the moss or beetle mites- the Oribatida. Other families of mites are red and furry, some snout-nosed and predatory. Some fungus mites explore their world with lengthened front legs. There are even startlingly blue and pink mites with striped legs, called the Opilioacaridae.
Other classes of soil animals can be drab in comparison, being colourless and obscure, like the proturans, symphylans, pauropods and enchytraeids. Pseudoscorpions prowl, hunting with their claws extended, midge larvae hunch and slide, slowly hunting or nibbling on fungal hyphae.

It’s a beautiful, wonderful, complex world down there in the dark and really worth getting to know.