Marram Grass Chelifer

• Pseudoscorpions perform a courtship dance in which the male deposits a packet of sperm on the ground and guides the female over it, holding her by the pincers.
• Despite looking like a miniature scorpion, it has no tail and no sting at all: the venom, where it exists, is in the pincers.
• Like all pseudoscorpions, it has a scorpion's pincers but no tail or sting, and is harmless to people.
• The female carries her eggs in a sac attached to her underside, and the young stay with her until their first moult.
• The male deposits a spermatophore on the ground and performs a dance to lead the female to it.
• It preys on mites, springtails and small larvae, which makes it a natural regulator of the soil fauna.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (arachnid)

Habitat and environment

Leaf litter, dry grassland, dunes and herbaceous vegetation of Europe

Sources consulted: Leach (1817) · revisiones de biología de Cheliferidae · British Arachnological Society