Marking springtails (Folsomia candida) with rubidium

Marking springtails is a basic tool to evaluate their fundamental ecological phenomena. Rb marking is based on the fact that enriched rubidium in an organism can be tracked trough the experiment. Our goal was to improve the rubidium-marking technique in Folsomia candida (Willem) for both microcosm and field experiments. We investigated four methodological problems of this technique, in particular, we determined the required Rb concentration in the diet to reach marking level, measured the period when labeling could be detected under two different feeding conditions, and we estimated the effects of Rb on springtails' growth. Because marked and unmarked animals are always mixed in the course of recapture we also measured the levels of contamination between labeled springtails and those in the control groups. For introducing rubidium, we fed animals with Rb-treated Baker's yeast. Rubidium-chloride labeling persisted in springtails for 27 days during which the Rb-levels in marked animals remained distinguishable from those in unmarked ones. Rb-elimination rate depended highly on the feeding conditions, with Rb-elimination being faster when food was in excess. The fitted exponential model to Rb-elimination suggested that Rb-labeling may be used for 46 and 103 days for experiments with and without food respectively. We found no effect on Collembola growth at low Rb-levels (1.2 μg Rb/g dry yeast) but at higher concentration growth was reduced. We found that contamination occurred when springtails were stored together in glycerin, however the unmarked sample with the highest Rb content was still just 4.8% of the lowest marked sample. These results provide a basis for mark-release-recapture and other studies using Rb marking on springtails.