Things I found under a polypore.
A single shelf fungus can support a community of organisms--living in and on it. Here I found three beetles and a pseudoscorpion. The very tiny rove beetle (genus Gyrophaena) and shining fungus beetle (genus Scaphisoma) are dependent on fungi. The larger beetle is a clown beetle (genus Platysoma)--they live under bark and feed on fly and beetle larvae.
When you gather wild mushrooms, you quickly discover what a staff of life fungi really are.
@ubi One author claims it was "named after their flattened tibiae resembling wide clown's trousers."
@rspfau i've been looking for clown beetles ever since i found one covered in Uropodina anal pedicels (some with uropodines still attached)
@nev I had to look that one up! "The phoretic stage of Uropodina mites is a deutonymph with developed morphological adaptations for dispersal by insects. Phoretic deutonymphs are able to produce a pedicel, a stalk-like temporary attachment structure that connects the mite with the carrier. "
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3969809/
@rspfau whoa, that's a big pseudoscorpion! I've never seen one in person, but I'm used to them being mite-sized
@endrift The one's we have here are about 4-5 mm. We have some mites that large here also, so they can be mite-sized, LOL!
@rspfau I guess it's true that everything's bigger in Texas