Supermicro Marvel

The Devon Fungi Group met up on Sunday at Deeper Marsh (Spitchwick Common) near Ashburton. As usual, I collected some invertebrates by way of the trusty sweep net. Whilst sorting the sample back home under the stereo microscope, I noticed a speck of dirt was not quite so. It was the tiniest rove beetle I had ever seen at just about 1.75mm long.

Out came the key to have a go at it and it wasn't easy seeing the fine detail required at 40x as optical quality degrades the higher you zoom in but I managed it. It is actually quite a common species, Anotylus tetracarinatus. Nice one.