Tasmanian Thipsels

A research blog

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M76 success (maybe) and a Liffey mystery

Back to Loyetea this week for another go at finding M76, and 3 potential specimens turned up in 2½ hours of hands-and-knees searching.

I wrote "potential" because the 3 are juveniles (stadium 6 female, stadium 5 female and stadium 5 male), and I can't be sure they're M76 without adult males and females. They're certainly tiny enough (to 5 mm long), and I have no records of any other dalodesmid thipsels from the Loyetea Road area where I searched.

In another part of N Tasmania, naturalist and semi-retired nurseryman Herbert Staubmann has collected 2 female thipsels on his bush block near Liffey. I'm looking forward to his finding males for me, because one possibility is M25 and I need better gonopod images of that species.

One of the Liffey mystery females (millimetre scale)

2026-08-31