I spent some time studying beach hoppers, often called sand fleas, a crustacean (usually Megalorchestia californiana in the Northwest).
I’m not sure what other beach walkers thought I was doing.
Bending over with my hands on my knees, staring down at the sand for minutes at a time mig
ht have been cause for speculation.
I first read about beach hoppers in “The Edge of the Sea” by Rachel Carson. It was the first time I thought much about a species gradually abandoning one niche for another.
Tiny beach (or sand) hoppers, once ocean-dwellers related to shrimp, now live
in burrows or in large clumps of moist, decaying seaweed just above the high tide mark. They may have left the ocean but they no longer can live under water.
If you see groups of tiny holes in the sand, they are most likely caused by beach hoppers exiting their dens the night before.
It’s possible to find tiny clumps of sand particles that block where they entered the sand, plugging up the hole behind them for protection and to keep in the moisture.
They can dig down up to a foot below the surface. The damp sand under seaweed is perfect, and many huddle in and below the clump. I believe (feel free to correct me) that the hoppers are the only beach species that hops.
If you kick over a clump of kelp (hoppers won’t bite you), panicked hoppers burst from the protective seaweed, leaping in a random manner up to a yard at a time, powered by rear appendages. Hopping takes on a new urgency as they try to find the nearest clump of decaying seaweed that provides the required cover.
They feed, mostly on decaying seaweed, at night as a survival technique. Although very small, they are food for rove beetles, flocks of shorebirds and occasionally raccoons.
These amphipods use long antennae to help them feel about at night, one pair of which is a rosy-orange color.
Research in South Africa has shown that at least some beach hopper relatives can navigate with clues that include celestial objects, beach slope and sand moisture.
Beach hoppers, in the one-third to 1-inch-long range, mate from June to November, with the males fertilizing 10 to 100 eggs that are carried in brood pouches on the females’ legs until they are hatched and unceremoniously released at night.
Males sometimes battle over rights to a burrow left the night before. The theory is that it takes less energy to fight than to dig, although it’s possible that they know that a female is in the burrow.
On the bookshelf: What do teachers do with those summers “off?” Larry “Jungle” Shortell tells all in “Summers Off: The Worldwide Adventures of a Schoolteacher” ($22).
From Aruba to Iceland to Volcanoes and Ziplines (yes, the chapters are alphabetical), Shortell takes readers along on his adventures and misadventures, a book of chances to laugh at and with this explorer.
Any book by Amy Stewart is worth a read. This time it’s “Wicked Bugs: The Louse that Conquered Napoleon’s Army & Other Diabolical Insects” ($19).
One insect is the death-watch beetle, mentioned in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” distastefully considered by Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, prevented from destroying the roof of the Bodleian Library in Oxford by replacing the roof, and cursed by many homeowners whose rafters have been turned to powder.
Other creatures featured include bookworms, the garden’s dirty dozen, chigger mites (speaking from experience, best avoided), corpse-eaters and swarming millipedes.
Columnist Sharon Wootton can be reached at 360-468-9964 or www.songandword.com.
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