New Brunswick Pseudoscorpion
"New Brunswick Pseudoscorpion" (oil on birch panel 12 x 16 in.) On 28 June 2019 , two days into this year’s BiotaNB survey as “Resident Artist” in the Kennedy Lakes Protected Natural Area, I found myself sliding down through the ocular tubes of a microscope, into the worlds of Rotifers and Water Bears. As the botanists, returning to the lab trailer from their field excursions, identified their collections of fungi, mosses, and Liverworts, one of them called my attention to a Pseudoscorpion he’d found wandering among tiny mosses as if they were trees and bushes. Pseudoscorpions are tiny predators, catching and eating anything smaller than themselves - mites, nematodes, and tiny larvae of this and that. The Pseudoscorpion we see most often is a little larger than the one I’ve painted here - the indoors species, Chelifer cancroides , is a welcome symbiont in pantry and closets. This one is as yet unidentified - the shape and proportions of claws to cephaloth...