Tiny Book/Barklouse in Kitchen
Sam spotted this tiny little insect crawling on the newspaper on November 11, 2024. It was barely big enough to even tell that it was there, let alone see what kind of insect it was. It became a lot clearer when I hauled out the macro camera and got zoomed in a bit.
This is pretty clearly one of the Psocodea, which are variously known as barklice or booklice. This largely depends on where you find them – if they are on tree bark they are barklice, but if they are in your books they are booklice.
They are related to the parasitic lice, but they feed on things like fungi and miscellaneous organic debris. BugGuide says there are over 1200 species in North America. And they are so itty-bitty that there aren’t a lot of good ID photos available.
I don’t see any evidence of wing buds on this one, so it either is not one of the winged species, or it is a very young nymph. I’m inclined to think it is just wingless. The lurid green spots were kind of a surprise, I didn’t expect it to be so brightly colored. It looks broadly similar to Trogium pulsatorium, the Larger Pale Booklouse, except that it is wider across the thorax and T. pulsatorium doesn’t appear to have anything like those green spots.
I really have no idea what the ultimate source of it was. It is so tiny that it could easily pass through a window screen like it wasn’t even there, and so it could very well have accidentally come in from outside. Or, it could be one of the several species that have colonized the indoor environment, and so we might find more of them in here if we look. They could also be living in the soil of the potted plants. At any rate, they are harmless unless they are present in quantities (in which case, they could be eating the glue out of our books, the way that silverfish do). And by “quantities”, I mean probably tens of thousands would be necessary to cause visible damage.
And, if we were wondering what the spiders that build webs in the corners of the house eat, it is likely that they eat these (among other things)