Today we are in the mountains of Colombia's west coast and we are looking for Dinospiders. Dinospiders are a unique order of arachnids and this is for several reasons that I will explain as we find them. I have seen quite a few at this point, both during the day and at night, so finding them should be a guarantee today. We have a Cope's Parrot Snake coming down this vine here. This one looks like it might bite me, so I'm going to get it out off camera. This parrot snake that we have is Leptophis depressirostris and it's one of two parrot snake species that lives here. The other one is the Green Parrot Snake, Leptophis ahaetulla, specifically the subspecies L. a. urosticus. Around here, the way that we can tell that this is Cope's Parrot Snake is because the scales on the top of its head are green instead of bronze. This snake is also the smaller of the two species; it attains a maximum length of about 1½ meters, meanwhile, the Green Parrot Snake can reach 20 cm more than that. This is a fully diurnal species of snake and it specializes mostly in eating birds, but its diet is not limited to this. It also eats bird eggs, frogs, frog eggs, lizards, and other snakes on occasion. Some of these snakes that they eat end up being conspecifics, which means that this species can be cannibalistic. It's one of the relatively few cannibalistic Snake species known from this area. While most diurnal colubrid snakes in the neotropics are known to be active hunters, this is also true for parrot snakes, but they are also known to sit still on branches waiting for small birds to perch that they can then strike at. I was just searching through leaf litter and I thought I might explain what I'm doing. I'm looking for areas where leaves accumulate on the ground. Usually this happens behind plants, for example. This also happens in shallow ditches in the ground as well as in areas where the trees overhead shed a lot of leaves. The Ricinulei are living in the layer between the leaves and the ground mostly. Here it's pretty shallow. We've already reached the area where there's topsoil. In other areas you have to search through a lot of leaves before you get to that layer. This is the area you are most likely to encounter them with a few exceptions. We have our first Cryptocellus right in here. So what is so special about the order Ricinulei? First, I think I should mention their primary common name. These are most often referred to as Hooded Tick-Spiders. One of the first things that you'll notice about these arachnids is that they don't have eyes and they don't have any external mouthparts either. For most arachnids, the pedipalps are easily visible but, for these ones, they hang off of the ventral side. As one of the more poorly understood orders that's still living today, part of what is not very well known about them is their diet. Some species have been known to prey on termites and ant larvae as well as being opportunistic scavengers, but others, like the ones that live in caves, feed on bat guano. As for the species that feed on ant larvae and termites, this kind of diet might influence where they live on the ground. For example, there was an instance where I was able to find three of them in a fallen termite nest with very few termites left in it. Interestingly enough, these do seem to fluoresce under ultraviolet light. While on the adults this fluorescence is not very bright, on the smaller ones which I'll also try to find, this fluorescence is much more striking. Look at this mantis back here on the leaf. This is an adult male Choeradodis rhombicollus that I've disturbed. These mantises in the genus Choeradodis are known as hooded mantises or shield mantises. The one that we have here is the Peruvian Shield Mantis and, despite its common name, its distribution in Peru is quite limited. These are more predominantly found in southern Mexico, Central America, Colombia, and Ecuador where they mainly inhabit primary and secondary rainforests. What I find really interesting about mantises in the genus Choeradodis is that they are highly susceptible to having epizoites growing on them. The epizoites in question can be liverworts, fungi, or lichens, and they are most commonly found on the hood of the mantis, the shield. If you have not already noticed, the one that we are looking at right now actually has some of these epizoites. They tend to be quite small, but they're easily noticeable if you know what you're looking for. For this one, there's a relatively large plant growing near its head on the thorax, but whatever this plant or possibly lichen is, it is also growing on other parts of the hood as well. You'll also notice whitish spots that look like mildew or mold; those are actually lichens and they have what look like small black hairs poking out of them. These are called epizoites instead of parasites because they don't actually extract any nutrients from the cuticle or exoskeleton of this mantis: they're completely harmless. According to a 2010 paper, these might be the only insects that are known to have this relationship with epizoites. Ordinarily, when these are not growing on a mantis, it seems that these are the same organisms that grow on plant surfaces, which I'll show you after I release the mantis. In this area where we found the mantis, if we take a look at the leaves that are around here, you'll see that there's a bunch of small mosses or liverworts, lichens, and fungi that might be living on them. Depending on the leaf, you'll find a different kind of community on them, but it seems that pretty much any Leaf around here that's large enough will harbor at least something if it's been around long enough. On a dead one like this, they stand out quite a bit, but once this leaf disintegrates, they will also die with it. In theory, the ones that were found on the hood of the mantis should be the same as some of the ones that you can find on these leaves. I just did a quick search and I couldn't really find any that looked similar to the one on the hood of the mantis, but I've only searched a few leaves, so maybe if I tried a little harder. I also couldn't find the lichen that we just saw on that mantis on any of the leaves near me. Down here is one of those fallen termite nests that I was talking about. The pieces are kind of scattered around because it probably exploded when it hit the ground. It was likely attached to this palm at one point, I guess. Look, a little scorpion just came out of one of these pieces that I just broke off. These are not only good for finding Dinospiders, as you just saw. There's a lot of interesting invertebrate life that can be found in these, notably velvet worms and a lot of interesting millipedes and kin. The reason we're not going to search this one is because it's too tough at the moment. It needs to be softer to really dig through and that'll probably take a couple weeks at least more. These here are the kind of consistency of fallen [termite] nest that you'd want to search through. They crumble extremely easily and you can search through all the pieces. If you do it gently, instead of having to check every hole, what you can do is just break through a bunch of it and lay it on the ground and watch the life kind of crawl out of it on the surface. Another thing: here's a pretty tough piece – you can see it's quite difficult to break apart. Typically the first things that are going to colonize these ones are ants. I'm pretty sure there's ants living inside this one too and that is often times no good for trying to find other invertebrates living inside these, but there's a good chance that that is not the case with Dinospiders. Down here on this fallen vine we have quite a nice grasshopper. That is this one right here: Colpolopha sinuata. This is a fairly common species around here and likely a common species throughout much of its range, but despite this, it doesn't really have a common name. Speaking of range, it has kind of a peculiar distribution. It's found in the Magdalena Valley and Solano Bay, which is where I am right now, as well as much of the area between those two places that I just mentioned, much of which is the Andes. Unlike a lot of the grasshoppers that live around here, Colpolopha sinuata likes to live inside the forest as opposed to in clearings or generally areas that receive more sun. This is a niche that is far more frequently occupied by katydids and other long-horned orthopterans. In addition to this, while many of them can be found on plants, dead or alive, they are also quite commonly found on the ground, which is not too surprising considering that there's a little bit of leaf mimicry going on here. There are several aspects of its morphology that make it kind of cryptic. Speaking of morphology, there are a couple of characteristics on this grasshopper that are kind of interesting. Part of the thorax is raised and compressed into a kind of ridge. I also wanted to point out the notably spiny back legs here. Thought that I might search next to an ant hill as well. I see one in here. Oh, no, there's two. There's two of them right here. Let me show you. [They’re] sitting right on top of each other. The second one is a little bit difficult to see. There it is. Ricinulei are one of the 15 orders of arachnids that are still extant today and their closest relatives are the Acari, or better known as mites. Based on the fossil record, we know that this order emerged in the late Carboniferous period, more specifically about 319 million years ago, and this postdates the emergence of the Acari with which it has the closest common ancestor. Speaking of fossils, another thing that makes this order very unique is that it is a Lazarus taxon. A Lazarus taxon is any animal or group of animals that was first discovered as a fossil instead of the living organism which is discovered later. The timeline of their discovery is kind of funny. They were first described from a fossil in 1837, but the first living Dinospider was discovered only a year later and formally described. While it has been almost 200 years since the description of this order, it was one of the last extant arachnid orders to be described. We have a large adult Oxybelis aeneus trying to get away in these vines here. We're at a bit of a stalemate right now, but I'll see what I can do. Might get bitten a few times. I'm calling this snake the Brown Vine Snake, Oxybelis aeneus. I know that might cause some people to correct my identification, but please know that, if these are actually Oxybelis vittatus or transandinus, I actually don't really care all that much. This is not a group of snakes that I'm all that invested in. Before the Brown Vine Snake taxonomic split that was fairly recent, this was one of the most widespread snake species in the new world. It used to range from southern Arizona all the way into Brazil and now, with the three species that I just mentioned, it isn't all that clear where their geographical limits are, especially near the Darien region, which I'm not too far away from. I managed to catch another one of these Brown Vine Snakes that was in the vicinity. You can tell that they don't really mind each other's presence, but you can see that this smaller one does mind my presence. Like I've mentioned before, these Oxybelis are well known for gaping their mouths and always being ready to strike. Despite this behavior, I still have not been bitten by one. I'm not going to get too close for the reason that I just stated, but you can somewhat tell from this distance that the inside of the mouth is purple. Also, you'll see that this juvenile does not have the yellow chin like the adult does. Other than that, they look pretty much the same. Oh, here’s a really small Ricinuleid right here. The first thing you'll notice about the one that we have here as opposed to the last three that we saw, is that its coloration is quite different and, proportionally speaking, its butt is also much larger. Adults in this order of arachnids are just called adults, but the one that we have here or any immature Dinospider is referred to as a deutonymph. There's only one except to this and that is the first instar. The first instar of Dinospiders is referred to as the nymph. A nymph dinospider is what makes this order arguably one of the most unique among all arachnids. The reason for this is that they only have six legs instead of eight and they only gain the additional pair of legs after the successive molt. So while it is true that all adult arachnids have eight legs, nymphs of dinospiders are the general exception to that rule when arachnids are not fully mature. In fact these dinos spiders starting out with six legs might be the reason that the first dinospider description in 1837, like I mentioned, was actually as a beetle instead of an arachnid. These dinos spiders only have one offspring at a time. A single egg is stored under the mother's hood, or the vertical plate on the prosoma, until it hatches into a nymph. As soon as these have a total of four pairs of legs, that is when they are referred to as deutonymphs. It takes them several years to reach adulthood. I'd like to point out that these deutonymphs fluoresce quite substantially brighter than the adults do under ultraviolet light. We have a stick insect over here on this dead palm leaf. This one I think is from the tribe Xerosomatini. Not too sure. Like a lot of the stick insects out here, this one is possibly an undescribed species. Whatever this species is, this is the first time that I am seeing it and, I must say, it's one of the strangest looking phasmids that I have ever seen in my life. There are a few morphological characteristics that stand out to me here. You'll see that on the thorax it has these two horns that point sideways, over here on the abdomen a few of the tergites are laterally expanded and compressed, and then it has quite a few leafy bits on its legs. There's a good chance that this one here is an adult. You'll notice that it doesn't have any wings or wing buds, which is something that is always present in immature phasmids that eventually grow wings. In addition to this we can be almost certain that this one is a female, not a male. Also, similar behavior to other cryptic species: this one seems to fold up when it feels threatened, which is quite common among phasmids. And, of course, it doesn't really move all that much. Well, unfortunately, I knocked over the dead leaf that it was sitting on, so I'm just going to lay it down in here. As I'm moving through this forest looking for these Dinospiders, I realized that I wanted to say that habitat at large doesn't seem to matter too much for these arachnids. What's really important is the microhabitat, but it doesn't really matter if you are in an area that receives sun or not, near logs or not, near a river or not, they can be found pretty much anywhere as long as you're looking in the right place on the ground. Way up here on this leaf is a katydid. It's right over here and it is quite far off the ground. [It’s] out of my reach, so I'm going to have to bend this palm down and I think I'll be able to catch it. Here it is from the underside. There it is. This is a katydid in the genus Pezochiton I believe. This katydid that we have here is from the tribe Leptotettigini, and this is a tribe that is fairly widespread throughout South America and moderately diverse, however I don't think there's too many species from that tribe that live in this area, or at least not ones that look like the one that we have here. There are other species in this tribe that are found in Colombia but only in the east on the Amazon side and that makes the identification relatively straightforward. I should mention that this katydid that we're looking at, Pezochiton, is monotypic. The only species in this genus is Pezochiton grandis. This is a species that was described from the Valle del Cauca, which is not too far south from where I am right now. It's part of the same rainforest system, the Choco Rainforest. This katydid might be endemic to this region. These katydids are nocturnal, arboreal, and known to feed on fallen fruits, but not much else is known about them. This is the palm that we found this katydid on. I'm just going to release it at the base here. This is the final amount of Dinospiders collected: a full ten of them. You might be wondering why I held on to all of these Dinospiders here. Some of the ones that you see are the ones that we found in this video and others are ones that I found on my own time. These Dinospiders belong to the genus Cryptocellus and it's quite likely that within that genus there are many undescribed or new species. That might be true for the ones that we have here, which is why I've collected these specimens. The species of described Cryptocellus which is closest to where I am right now is Cryptocellus glenoides and that is a species that was described from the Valle del Cauca which, as I mentioned earlier, is not too far south from where I am right now. Like I mentioned, the ones that we have here are in the genus Cryptocellus. These are distributed in the neotropics only from south Texas through Mexico, Central America, much of northern South America, and part of the Lesser Antilles. They are one of only two Dinospider Genera that are found in the new world, the other one is Pseudocellus. Worldwide however, there are three total genera, the additional one being Ricinoides. This is a genus that is found in West Africa, which is not a coincidence considering that it is most likely A Gondwana relict. When modern day South America and Africa were connected by land, the distribution of Dinospiders was at one point entirely contiguous. Finally, something I wanted to mention way earlier in the video but completely forgot to: you might have noticed the resting position of these Dinospiders. They keep all of their laterigrade legs tucked in. It is possible that they also do this to play dead. The reason I say this is that, sometimes, when you agitate ones that are in this position, they don't really do much at all and there isn't much that you can do to wake them up so-to-speak. Well, that is all for this video of looking for Dinospiders in Western Columbia. In terms of numbers, I would say that that was quite a success. Anyway, hope you enjoyed, thank you for watching. :D