Dragonfly Head

svalley · Post by **svalley** » Sun Oct 08, 2017 2:05 pm

A female Erythemis collocata from Freeway Lakes, Albany, Oregon, USA, 9-Aug-2017.

Nikon D810 with 5x Mitutoyo mounted on a 200mm Micro-Nikkor, single diffused flash with reflector, StackShot, Zerene Stacker.

Enjoy, Steve

JH · Post by JH » Mon Oct 09, 2017 10:46 pm

Nice and informative pictures.
Best regards Jörgen Hellberg

Sumguy01 · Post by **Sumguy01** » Sun Oct 15, 2017 5:16 pm

Very nice.
Thanks for sharing.

RobertOToole · Post by **RobertOToole** » Mon Oct 30, 2017 6:35 pm

Very good work.

Thanks for adding all the technical details.

All the best,

Robert

Beatsy · Post by **Beatsy** » Tue Oct 31, 2017 10:43 am

Very nice set. In the first pic, there's a red thingy on top of the left eye that seems missing in the rest. Reminiscent of a mini scorpion (but obviously not). Any ideas?

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Tue Oct 31, 2017 11:02 am

Beatsy wrote:In the first pic, there's a red thingy on top of the left eye that seems missing in the rest. Reminiscent of a mini scorpion (but obviously not). Any ideas?

Good eyes! That looks like a pseudoscorpion. As Wikipedia says: They are tiny and inoffensive, and are rarely seen due to their small size, despite being common in many environments. Pseudoscorpions often carry out phoresy, a form of commensalism in which one organism uses another for the purpose of transport.

I had never seen the things until about a year ago, when out of curiosity I put a sample of "dirt" from the bottom of a compost pile into a berlese funnel separator. Lo and behold, out the bottom eventually came a horde of tiny springtails, and several pseudoscorpions. But I did not know the bit about phoresy until reading the Wikipedia article this morning.

--Rik

Beatsy · Post by **Beatsy** » Tue Oct 31, 2017 11:12 am

rjlittlefield wrote: Good eyes! That looks like a pseudoscorpion. As Wikipedia says: They are tiny and inoffensive, and are rarely seen due to their small size, despite being common in many environments. Pseudoscorpions often carry out phoresy, a form of commensalism in which one organism uses another for the purpose of transport.
--Rik

Well I never! Thanks for the info Rik. Shame it fell off. Looked perfectly posed for what might have been a stunning high mag image to add to the set. Could it still be lurking around under the specimen mount Steve?

svalley · Post by **svalley** » Thu Nov 02, 2017 4:01 pm

I missed the last few posts for some reason. Very cool that I got a Pseudoscorpion and didn't even realize. They have venom fangs at the ends of their chelae (claws). The chitinous exoskeleton part of the chelae are made from metallo-organic compounds.