Over the last few years, I have been spending a good deal of time searching through leaf litter and general plant and soil/sand detrius and investigating the invertebrates which I was finding.

It all started with a few pseudoscorpions and my desire to try and locate more of them to increase my own species count and also provide more modern records of these species. I did however find that I was seeing an enormous number of other creatures including mites, centipedes, millipedes and beetles, but there were also a large number of Springtails (or Collembola) which seemed to include a large number of different species. a Quick bit of research showed that they hadn't been studied locally before with just a few records to species level at the Guernsey Biological Record Centre.

The identification and recording of these therefore became a mission! I quickly learned that very few species had been recorded or identified in Guernsey meaning that previous entomologists such as thelate Charles David had not managed to look at this group. They had clearly always been there and I was finding that many species were numerous and widespread, I have therefore decided to put together a Gallery and hopefully some distribution maps showing my current finds which I will expand upon with time.

It soon became obvious that there were a lot of species present in Guernsey. I have now searched various areas on the island, mostly leaf litter from various locations but also in detrius from rotting wood and compost, soil and sand samples, and also samples of seaweed, driftwood and sandy samples from the strandline. Some species are clearly widespread and common whilst others seemed to prefer areas of specific habitat, some specialists, some generalists, as you might expect.

The majority of springtails and between 0.5mm and 2mm long with some of the larger species such as Orchesella cincta and Pogonogathellus longicornis maybe as much as 5mm plus the cool long twirly antennae of P.longicornis.