A wander for millipedes

We had a walk in our local cemetery today. The eastern part of the cemetery is the oldest and the area has been pretty much left to run wild for many decades. There are huge trees embracing headstones and ivy also covering them, so sometimes it is not obvious you are in a cemetery. It is a muddy and wild place to explore. The cemetery has a lot of dead wood left on the ground and loose stones, which makes it a great place to search for millipedes: today's wild thing.
 We pushed through nettle beds, brambles and hogweed, waded through muddy puddles, crossed others by walking on logs and did a little millipede collection on the way. The wet weather had also brought some interesting fungi.
 Millipedes do often go unnoticed, as they live under the cover of logs, bark and stones, on leaf-litter or in the soil. They have many similar body segments and a pair of legs on each segment. Despite their name, no species reaches 1000 legs. Millipedes have defensive glands and they often open into colour spots on the side of the body called ozadenes. There are about 60 British species of which we found four.

Pterostichus niger ground beetle, centipede, Discus snail under stone.

Tachypodoiulus niger is very easy to identify as it has a black body and white legs. When disturbed it wriggles like a snake. I often find it on dead wood.

In contrast, Cylindroiulus punctatus curls up when disturbed.

Here is once stretched. C. puctatus has a characteristic face mask between its eyes and a clubbed tail end.

In Blaniulus guttulatus the ozadenes are bright red. This species has no eyes and it's thin and tiny

Here are two Blaniulus guttulatus under a stone. They are often found together in large numbers.

A Flat-backed millipede, Polydesmus sp.

The Sycamore embracing a headstone.

A mushroom on yew that looked like mango ice cream.

Lots of Jelly ear fungus.

Cemetery Bugs

There is a large cemetery nearby and today me youngest daughter came with me and decided to have a bug safari. It was the first visit in the year that I have taken many more invertebrate than bird photos.

A pine Ladybird on orange lichen, Xanthoria parietina 

A group of the blind millipede Blaniulus guttulatus, with Porcellio scaber and a while slug under a piece of wood

A colourful cluster of Harlequin ladybirds appeared to have emerged from a crack in a damaged tree and some were flying off

Peacock sunbathing

A carpet of Lesser Celandines

Flowering Willow

Harlequins and Amaurobius (with nests?) under broken headstone.

Flat-backed millipedes

My local - now disused - Victorian cemetery is like an old woodland. There are mature trees with woodpecker holes, tree stumps, dead wood, thick leaf litter. Dead wood is a habitat full of life even in winter. Slugs and snails, springtails, millipedes and centipedes, woodlice, mites, little beetles and their larvae, tiny spiders, and fly larvae: they might be a bit torpid, but still active. In the cemetery, I often come across flat-backed millipedes, Polydesmus on dead wood, often in pairs. They are relatively large and - true to their name -, have a flat, sculptured back. There are five similar species of this genus in the UK that can be only told apart by examining the male gonopods, an 8th pair of modified legs to transfer sperm, or the females' genitalia (which opens behind the second pair of legs), features that can only seen properly when dissected. Males have sturdier legs and appear to have a gap behind the 7th leg (where their gonopods are), where in females the gap appears behind the second pair. The most common species is P. angustus.
 A couple of weeks ago, I surprised this pair of embracing flat-backed millipedes under a piece of rotting stump, maybe mating or just checking each other out? In another photo I can see that the head of the millipede on top is holding onto the rear end of the other one.

Pair of Polydesmus 3rd March 2013

And a few days ago I found a pair of smaller ones, one of them is walking at the top of the post.