small insects

[Chris J. Durden]

>Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 09:41:27 -0600
>To: andrew at home-apm.freeserve.co.uk
>From: "Chris J. Durden" <drdn at mail.utexas.edu>
>Subject: Re: small insects
>In-Reply-To: <8ajhfr$cj7$1 at newsg2.svr.pol.co.uk>
>
>Try soil insects or leaf-litter insects. These are found under rocks,
under logs, or can be sifted from leaf litter in woodland.
>  For you in uk, there are hundreds of species of springtail insects of
the order Collembola. Other soil insects are telsontails of the order
Protura, campodeans of the order Diplura, bristletails of the order
Machilida and silverfish of the order Lepismida. These are all wingless
insects but some have scales with iridescent colours. There are a host of
mites on which they feed or are fed upon by. There are pseudoscorpions.
There are some really beautiful staphylinid and pselaphid beetles. These
are all minute and are best appreciated under the microscope. Of course
there are no field guides to speak of but I can send you a list of
introductory works, which have tips for collecting, if you like.
>......Chris Durden
>
>
>At 08:01  13/03/00 -0000, you wrote:
>>I wonder if anybody can help me,I have only just recently been introduced to
>>entomology and would like to research something   i.e. the very small in the
>>insect world either nearly microscopic or indeed microscopic, to my
>>embarrassment I neither know what the study of these insects is called or
>>were to even begin to look,so if anyone could point me in the right
>>direction I would be very grateful.
>>Thanking you in advance Andrew Murphy
>>
>>