#hexapod

[critterz-n-creatures]

It took me 15 minutes to get my phone camera to focus on this damselfly, so now everyone gets to see the single good photo I got of it:

Image Description: A photo of a brown forktail damselfly sitting on a green plant. End ID.

[parachim]

98 hit 900 unique species observed on inat so here is a (potentially very rare) Isotomurus sp. they recorded recently

[bruneburg]

[toadalled]

My pretty boy FINALLY got an updated design! He is a royal Vatori (bug alien) courtesan, using dance and pheromones to perform stories and poems for visiting dignitaries. He is an entertainer, therapist, and cultural historian.

[critter-creature-or-beast]

This is a...

critter

creature

beast

Voting ended onDec 30, 2025

By Petter Bøckman, based on Sminthurus viridis (det F. Janssens).jpg by Drägüs - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

[alphynix]

Rhyniella praecursor was an early springtail that lived during the early Devonian, about 410-400 million years ago, in what is now Scotland. Discovered in the exceptionally well-preserved Rhynie chert fossil site, it's one of the earliest known hexapods.

It was around 2mm long (~0.08") and closely resembled some of its modern relatives – with distinctive anatomical features like a collophore and a furca – showing that springtails were already well-established in such an early terrestrial ecosystem.

It probably had a similar sort of ecological role to modern springtails, too, being involved in the breaking down of organic matter and the formation of soils.

———

NixIllustration.com | Tumblr | Patreon

References:

Dunlop, Jason A., and Russell J. Garwood. "Terrestrial invertebrates in the Rhynie chert ecosystem." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 373.1739 (2018): 20160493. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2016.0493

"Collembolans." University of Aberdeen School of Geosciences, https://www.abdn.ac.uk/geosciences/departments/geology/research/the-rhynie-chert/the-learning-resource-site/fossil-fauna/collembolans/

Whalley, Paul, and Edmund A. Jarzembowski. "A new assessment of Rhyniella, the earliest known insect, from the Devonian of Rhynie, Scotland." Nature 291.5813 (1981): 317-317. https://doi.org/10.1038/291317a0

Wikipedia contributors. “Rhyniella” Wikipedia, 03 Dec. 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyniella

[cultofthewyrm]

by alexcipriano

[herpsandbirds]

Springtail (Deutonura monticola), family Neanuridae, order Poduromorpha, France

These creatures are Springtails (subclass Collembola).

These animals were once considered to be primitive insects, but are now understood to be in a closely related groups of hexapods.

photographs by Philippe Garcelon