Him and her

I went to Trench Wood today, in search of mini-beasts. When I arrived home I told R the best thing I'd found had been my friend RC, who I haven't seen for several weeks, and with whom it was nice to be able to have a good long chat, but it seems that I must have discovered a few reasonable invertebrates as well, because I've been struggling all evening to process and identify them all. In due course I'll probably do a Facebook post, but for tonight I've picked out two photos that I think are quite interesting.

The main image is a pair of Populicerus populi leafhoppers on an aspen sapling. It took me a while when I began seeing these green and yellow bugs to realise that they were the same species, because most hoppers aren't as sexually dimorphic as this, but I now know that the slightly larger (c.6mm) and greener specimen at the back is a female, and the slightly smaller (c.5mm) and yellower individual at the front is a male. 

I'm no expert on Heteropteran genitalia, but I think I'm right in saying that the male is showing off his aedeagus here - though that's perhaps not fair: I don't suppose he was expecting to be photographed from this angle when he set out from home this morning. Anyway, having had it brought to my attention, I've become fascinated by the fact that it's... sort of feathery. About half an hour ago the words "tickling stick" came unbidden into my mind. I very much wish they hadn't, but having thought the thought, I find that I'm now unable to unthink it.

You're welcome.

Moving swiftly on, tonight's second photo is a tiny jumping spider - again, only about 5mm long. I've spent a long time on research for this one, because I'd never seen one before, and I think that it's a female Evarcha arcuata. I'm a little tentative about this though, because, quoting Falk, this species is "usually found in mire, wet heath or damp acid grassland", which doesn't sound much like Trench Wood. (That said, there was a Sericomyia silentis hoverfly basking just a few feet further along the ride, which is primarily a species of peat bogs.) Falk goes on to say of the spider he calls the Bowed Jumper that it's nationally scarce, "with records concentrated within southern heathland districts (especially the heaths of Surrey and the New Forest) but with scattered records as far north as Yorkshire." I'm currently awaiting expert confirmation of my identification, but if I'm right it will have been quite an exciting find.

While doing my research I came across this article, on the sleep habits of Evarcha arcuata and the question of whether spiders dream, and this film of a female moving around on a leaf. Despite the fact that it's a tiny spider, the film is probably unsuitable for arachnophobes, but I found the article both interesting and rather charming.