In the middle of an April night in Israel’s Jordan Valley, Yoram Zvik sweeps a UV light over the dark ground near throngs of marching ants. The light passes over the brilliant blue-green fluorescence of a scorpion clambering alongside the ant trail. Peering closer, Zvik — a scorpiologist at the University of Haifa — sees black specks on the scorpion’s glowing back. But they aren’t dirt or sand. They’re alive, and unlike their venom-tailed transport, the stowaways don’t fluoresce under UV light, which betrays their location.
The millimeter-long creatures (about one-twentieth the length of the scorpions) are pseudoscorpions. They have eight legs and claws like their much larger arachnid
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