A slug and a surprise
Over the weekend, I decided to see what I could find outside. It was a bit cold, so nothing was obvious in the open so I turned to the standard process of turning over different logs and rocks to see what I could find.
On turning over a piece of wood, I was delighted to find a leopard slug. These slugs are native to Europe, but have become common in gardens on the West Coast of the United States. According to Wikipedia, they mostly eat rotting plant matter and fungi but another site mentions that they eat other slugs so I’m not sure.
The slug was actually too big to fit in the view finder with my MP-E 65 so I settled with taking some pictures of the texture of the slug – which I found rather interesting.
However, there was more than meets the eye with this slug, as I was about to find out when I turned it over.
I decided to turn the slug over to see if I could get some kind of shot of the face, when I was surprised to see tiny mites moving all over it. There were quite a few of them.
Here’s another shot of them.
Here’s one blown up 200%.
It’s amazing the things you can find on the Internet these days, as a little bit of research was all that was necessary to find out the answer.
These mites are called the trombidiform mite – Riccardoella oudemansi. They are not beneficial for the slug and pierce its skin to drink the blood. This particular slug was moving very slowly and I suspect the large number of mites on it was having a bad effect.
From reading through a number of web sites, it seems to be a bit controversial how much of an effect the mites have on the slug. However, there is some research that indicates 50 mites and above definitely have a negative effect – and this slug certainly had quite a few.
Leopard slugs themselves are quite interesting for the ‘mating dance’ they do. Two slugs gather together and hang themselves from a branch in a tree with a trail of mucus.
It’s amazing what a simple day’s investigation can bring!
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Tags: leopard slug, macro, mite, photography, slug