Hothouse Lovelies

Firstly, I have indeed replaced my lost camera with another from the Olympus Tough series. I'm now the proud owner of a brand new TG-7, all the way from New Jersey. It came with an extensive bundle of extra accessories which sadly lacked the only accessory I really needed - the flash diffuser. I forked out once more and, diffuser duly acquired, was soon ready for action.  

For most of the past three weeks I've stayed fairly local, a recent sneak trip into the Inverness Botanic Gardens being my only away day since the last post. This was my third visit to the Gardens where, as per usual, I restricted my wanderings to the heated glasshouse area. At first glance it appears slightly underwhelming, as far as finding exotic invertebrates goes, but given a bit of time and close scrutiny there are plenty of weird and wonderful species to be found. 

I lifted rather a few of the potted plants visible in the lower image, but failed to find a single animal hiding beneath them. The 'wilder' parts of the glasshouse do have a number of rocks that look ideal to check beneath, but almost all of them are concreted into place. However, a few were loose and I collected a small number of millipedes and a tiny ant for further investigation. 

The upstairs level was quite productive, seeing as it effectively places you in the canopy layer of the trees below. I collected two more species of ants, took pics of some mealybugs (I think I'd require specialist literature to get the mealybugs to species, which I don't have, so I didn't collect any) and spotted a small jumping spider which teleported from leaf to leaf. No chance of potting that, so I made do with these poor images instead.

I've yet to reach a definitive identification for this small salticid, and in fact I may never know what it is. However, I did manage to identify the next beast of a spider without too many complications. 

About the size of my thumbnail, stealthily creeping along a gnarly branch above head height

This stunner is an adult male Hasarius adansoni, also known as Adanson's House Jumper. It's originally an African species but has been moved around the world and is now found throughout many warmer regions and, as here, found inside greenhouses and other heated environments in cooler parts of the world. In Britain it is well-known from several large glasshouse environments, though I believe this individual could be the northernmost record for the species in Britain. I popped it on the UK Spiders FB Group for confirmation, just in case there are lookalike species I'm not aware of, and it quickly came back confirmed as H.adansoni, a new species for me and my first new invert of the year. Smart! There's a nice page about it here.

Uloborus plumipes is easily the most noticeable spider inside the hothouse

Unknown species of mealybug

Larval Cryptoleamus montrouzieri  - a ladybird predator of mealybugs

The last thing of note inside the greenhouse was finding a colony of an (as yet) unknown species of moth larvae. I suspect it's a tortricid of some sort of another. Here are a few pics showing the initial grazing patches, then an upperside silken retreat along the midrib followed by an underside leaf fold with larva. The hostplant is Lantana camara, maybe that will help narrow down the options.

Back indoors I keyed the millipedes through as Choneiulus palmatus (x3) which in Scotland is known from heated glasshouses, and Cylindrioiulus britannicus (male) which occurs outdoors but is also known in Scotland from heated glasshouses. So no real surprises there.

Choneiulus palmatus on the underside of one of the very few rocks I could check beneath

Crematogaster scutellaris - an alien ant that occurs in the canopy layer of the hothouse

I have a Hypoponera on a pin, awaiting a proper determination. Ideally I'd like to go back and collect several more, just to get a better feel for the species. PSL whizz-kid Finley Hutchinson wants us to hit the hothouse together sometime soon, he's already seen Crematogaster scutellaris, but not Hasarius adansoni or the millipedes. So that's something to look forward to. 

In other business, my PSL Yearlist is ticking along quite nicely, currently standing at over 400 species. But that's something for another post. Having survived the latest storm relatively unscathed, I'm keen to further extend my yearlist, plus I need to start targeting various species on my PSL Tarts Challenge. Again, that's one for a future post. 

The red dot is where I live - I was in the actual eye of the storm for 30 mins!!!