The vertical plains of lichen and moss that line local trails not infrequently harbour pseudocolonies of barklice, vaguely termite-like insects with long antennae and wings folded like a tent over an abdomen that visibly expands as the psocopteran chews its way through a veldt of fine, filamentous strands. At times, large aggregations of flightless nymphs can be seen on an exposed flank, gorging themselves on the aufwuchs of tree bark or embarking on an asynchronous wave of moults into adulthood. Restricted to the curves of forest giants and ill-equipped to dip their maws into standing pools, barklice possess the rare ability to drink from the air, using pre-oral sclerites that catalyse water condensation and a cibarial pump that sends the resulting fluid into the gut.
The imagos are curious creatures; Clematoscenea, the most commonly encountered species in Singapore, is a pale orange or powder-red insect, around half-an-inch in length, with a bulbous head, primitive mouthparts and a strongly built thorax to which smoky black and ghostly white wings are attached. Another, smaller, barklouse that appears to be non-eusocial is bright orange with see-through wings. Metylophorus, another local psocopteran, sports gothic shades and yellow veins. A fourth species, in the family Epipsocidae, has hyaline wings and orange eyes on a pale body of weak stripes.
Even as adults, many barklice move like cows, gathering at arboreal fields where the grazing is good to munch on thalli and minute fruiting bodies. They are reluctant to fly, preferring to scatter feebly when disturbed and appearing unseemingly eager, for all their apparent defencelessness, to resume their mowing after a brief dispersal of their ranks. Little else is known about their instincts for self-preservation, which are barely visible yet almost certainly sound enough to ensure the survival of these otherwise fragile but infurtive insects.
Curiously, the bark of some taxa is far worse than their bite, for their habit of repeatedly tapping their abdomens against dry walls once gave rise to a medieval spectre known as the Death-Watch, which the Rev. William Derham dispelled in 1701 with the observation, "The name of Death-Watches is common enough, and their noise terrible to many, who look upon it as the sound of the dreadful messenger of Death, little imagining it to be only a sportive exercise of a very common Insect." In these intemperate parts, however, there is little chance of catching a faint tap in the woods when the very air rings with the songs of hoppers, drummers and walkers who live in houses of pure white noise and leave in their wake a visible earworm of woes in a state of louse.
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