Demetrias atricapillus (Linnaeus, 1758)

Regular viewers may have noticed by now quite how disproportionately species seem to group as described in 1758, with only one european spider (Enoplognatha ovata) pre-dating this (and even that's disputed).

This comes down to the history of taxonomy. Yes, you're about to get a recap.

In 1753, Carolus Linnaeus (spellings vary), a Swiss botanist, gave the Linnaean Binomial its public premiere in a book on plants. His systematic grouping of organisms based on relatedness (an early nod to evolution, as you'll note that the official birthday of creator-not-assumed evolution was the publication of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in November 1859, over a century later) introduced a binomial naming system that paved the way for easy indexing of similar species and allowed naturalists to include either a descriptive identifier or a reference to something famous (or, in some cases, themselves). It was a more-or-less instant hit.

Five years later (in 1758), the botanist produced a zoological work, and the year of its publication was set as the official start of the attribution of binomial names to animals - that is to say, when taxonomists are trawling through records to try and find the first reference to an animal (and thereby credit a past naturalist with originally describing it), they don't have to bother looking at records older than that, which is handy because naming systems were more-or-less however the author pleased, and descriptions could be less than detailed.

However, as previously noted, the Linnaean binomial had been introduced - and quite popular - for plants five years previously, and quite a few naturalists had adopted it for other groups before Linnaeus himself applied it to everything in his Systema Naturae (that 1758 zoological work we mentioned earlier). Most of them are simply disregarded, but some - most notably Carl Alexander Clerck's(wiki link) 1757 treatise on spiders remain important works to this date, and so are less easily cast aside, which is why some spiders have a year-of-naming one year previous to the official start date for naming.

Okay, now that that's out of the way, on with the show...

Eukaryota
  Animalia
    Eumetazoa
      Bilateralia
        Nephrozoa
          Protostomia
            Ecdysozoa
              Arthropoda
                Hexapoda
                  Insecta
                    Dicondylia
                      Pterygota
                        Manopterygota
                          Neoptera
                            Eumetabola
                              Endopterygota
                                Coleopterida
                                  Coleoptera
                                    Adephaga
                                      Carabidae
                                        Harpalinae
                                          Lebiitae
                                            Lebiini
                                              Demetriadina

Note that outside of a few very well-studied groups of invertebrate, the use of supertribes (Lebiitae) and subtribes (Demetriadina) is extremely rare. Partially because evolution does not work at consistent speeds across the natural kingdom, but mostly because the more you find out about the relationships within a taxon, the more accurately you can tidy up their taxonomy. So while I would argue that ornithologists tend to oversplit (if an unbiased entomologist looked at a reed bunting and a sparrow, he or she would almost certainly keep them in one family, and quite possibly they wouldn't get anything more than a subgenus to separate them), entomologists tend to be working with taxa that have become so large that they are essentially meaningless, and so the finer splitting of higher taxonomy better represents the evolutionary history of a clade... 


Moving on - 

Demetrias atricapillus

(Linnaeus, 1758)

  This minute European ground beetle was photographed in West Sussex, UK in between a field and a saltmarsh... And, despite having been recognised as a separate species at least since Pope Benedict the 16th's clogs were popped, it has no common name.

Dicranopalpus ramosus (Simon, 1909)

So of the species so far, we've been sampling tropical (Zambian) and cold-temperate species (UK). Although by the limitations of my current lifestyle, that's all your likely to get for some time, today I'll throw in a species originally from Mediterranean climes - although it has recently become abundant in the southern counties of England...it's not as alarmist as it sounds, as wildlife in the UK is still catching up with the historical retreat of the ice, and part of the recent increase in the colonisation rate is down to the rise in global travel... Part of it...

Onwards...

Eukaryota
  Animalia
    Eumetazoa
      Bilateralia
        Nephrozoa
          Protostomia
            Ecdysozoa
              Arthropoda
                Chelicerata
                  Arachnida
                    Dromopoda
                      Opiliones
                        Eupnoi
                          Phalangioidea
                            Phalangiidae
                              Dicranopalpinae

Dicranopalpus ramosus

(Simon, 1909)

 As a harvestman (Opiliones - a relatively small order not-too-distantly related to scorpions, and a little less closely related to spiders and mites) the chances of it having a species specific common name are... low. 

Despite being only only very distantly related to spiders, they suffer the same tragic fate as most of the various Arachnid orders that aren't scorpions or ticks, and are constantly misidentified and mislabelled as spiders. 

Key differences include:

Diet: Spiders are all predatory. Harvestmen are generally omnivorous, generally feeding as much on fungi as they do on other invertebrates, although specialists do exist... 

Venom: Spiders have it. Their near-universal incapacity to handle solid foods means that they need to at the very least be able to liquify their food, and quite often stop it wriggling while the liquifying sets in. Harvestmen eat solids, which means venom is strictly optional. DESPITE POSSESSING VENOM, MOST SPIDERS ARE HARMLESS TO ORGANISMS TOO LARGE TO BE PREY DUE TO RELATIVELY MINUTE AMOUNTS OF VENOM AND - SOMETIMES MORE IMPORTANTLY - VENOM DELIVERY SYSTEMS WHICH ARE INAPPROPRIATE FOR PUNCTURING THICK SKINS. 

Body: Spiders have two body segments - a cephalothorax (front bit) and an abdomen (back bit), with a narrow connection between the two. Harvestmen have just the one, usually more-or-less ovoid

Eyes: Spiders have a basic eight-eye arrangement, with two rows of four eyes across the front of the cephalothorax, although various species have six, two or even no eyes. The basic eye arrangement of for harvestmen is just two, on top of the body.

There are a fair few other differences, but those should be enough to get you started. 

That's all, folks. 

Anthocharis cardamines (Linnaeus, 1758)

(of which subspecies, Anthocharis cardamines britannica (Verity, 1908)).

Regular readers, if such a thing existed, might feel somehow betrayed by my promising to post an image of a vertebrate, only for said image to feature an often-overlooked group that some, for reasons unknown to myself, do not find appealing.

Usually I would respond to such a petty complaint with a witty put-down, but I'll be charitable today and compromise - this time, I'm going to include a member of the one invertebrate group that almost everyone, everywhere finds appealing.

Onwards!

(PS - you'll notice that species included in previous posts are named in the taxonomy. If you click on these names, you'll hopefully also notice that they are hyperlinks to the post in which that animal was featured. As a rule, these links will be shown at the most recent shared ancestor between today's species and the linked species. I'm just trying it). 

Eukaryota
  Animalia
    Eumetazoa
      Bilateralia
        Nephrozoa also includes  Hipposideros vittatus and Thelotornis capensis oatesii and Lygodactylus capensis and also Chalcophaps indica
          Protostomia
            Ecdysozoa
              Arthropoda also includes Ligia oceanica
                Hexapoda
                  Insecta
                    Dicondylia
                      Pterygota
                       Manopterygota also includes Pseudagrion hageni
                          Neoptera also includes Cyathosternum prehensile and Sybilla
                            Eumetabola also includes Anoplocnemis curvipes and Pephricus.
                              Endopterygota also includes Melolontha melolontha and Anthia fornasiini and Hagenomyia tristis and Synagris proserpina and Otiorhynchus atroapterus .
                                Panorpida also includes Panorpa germanica and  Helophilus pendulus and Diasemopsis meigenii and Megistocera filipes filipes .
                                  Amphiesmenoptera
                                    Lepidoptera
                                      Glossata
                                        Neolepidoptera
                                          Heteroneura
                                            Ditrysia also includes Zebronia phenice
                                              Cossina
                                                Bombycina
                                                  Rhopacera
                                                    Papilionoidea
                                                      Pieridae
                                                        Pierinae
                                                          Anthocharini

Anthocharis cardamines brittanica 

(Verity, 1908)

Pictured perched on a field-side nettle in Bosham, West Sussex, UK.

 As the supspecific epithet ('britannica') would suggest, this subspecies is found primarily in the UK, where - over the main island (Great Britain) it is the only subspecies present. In the UK, it is commonly known as the Orange Tip. Although butterflies bearing this common name are common across most continents, this species (Anthocharis cardamines, various subspecies) is more-or-less restricted to temperate Eurasia.

It lays its eggs primarily on wild mustard-related plants, and so it often present in un-mowed verges of fields (and presumably causes some minor damage to cruciferous crops such as Rape) but is more noteworthy as a pollinator than a pest.