Adelaide's Shingleback Tick
S1, Female, perspective; lower leg join
Harvestmen
Front
| Adelaide's Shingleback Tick S1, Female, perspective; lower leg join | | Harvestmen Front | | ||
 | Class: | Animals (Animalia) - Jointed Legs (Arthropoda) - Spiders, Scorpions, Mites & Ticks (Arachnida) | |||
| Order: | Harvestmens (Opiliones) | ||||
| Family: | Harvestmen (Neopilionidae) | ||||
| Species: | Harvestmen (Megalopsalis sp) | ||||
| This Photo: | Dorsal | ||||
| Other names: | Daddy-long-legs, Daddy Long Legs, Daddy Longlegs or Daddy Long-legs | ||||
General Species Information: Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA) and elsewhere The Daddy Long-legs name is miss-leading in Australia as we also have Daddy Long-legs spiders, which look very similar, but are quite different. The visible difference between spiders & harvestmen is that harvestmen appear to have one single whole body. Spiders have an obvious distinction between the back (abdomen) & front (thorax). Harvestmen have no spinerets nor venom, but these differences are not visible. The species we have at Ellura looks like it has 12 legs! But it has 8 legs, like a spider, and 2 pairs of mouth parts. Two very long ones look like knees out the front (which are chelicerae), then two smaller helper feeders to their side (which would be palps). The long ones are pointed, while the side ones are rounded & hairy. Shahan Derkarabetian on iNaturalist said "They are always very cool to find. In this family the males have the extremely long chelicerae." | |||||
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