10/12/2021: Booklice bonanza

William Samojeden’s old publication perusing skills have shined through once more with another ridiculously tiny invertebrate: book lice!

Will was kind enough to share the husbandry techniques he’d compiled from various literature and I have to say despite being initially skeptical I’ll admit this new set-up is more successful than I could have ever hoped.

Book lice have been notoriously difficult for me, despite popping up in all of my invertebrate cultures from time to time. They fall into the category of small inverts that thrive in dry… yet humid conditions. This can be difficult to replicate consistently throughout the year and where wild-occurring, their presence isn’t always guaranteed; their populations come and go as conditions change though they always show up again somehow.

The biggest innovation with the set-up (which is, as straightforward and simple as it may sound, a 32 ounce deli cup with substrate, cardboard, a lid, and heat) is the use of corn meal over other grain based media. Different types of flours may support colonies of miscellaneous tiny invertebrates, but if the humidity is too high (which happens very easily during the humid summers here in Michigan) grain mite booms are inevitable and these will quickly kill all competition. Grain mites don’t seem to like corn meal at all, which gives the book lice a gigantic competitive edge all-around.

Will and I may pop these puppies under the microscope soon and see if we can get an ID, but for now they’ll just keep proliferating. Although they may be a touch small for most conventional predators to feed on, pseudoscorpions relish them and as the interest in other tiny predators grows they may find more uses shortly.

-Kyle