Here are some pictures of the first adult to mature:
Let's hope the rest of the nymphs mature with no problems, and that I get a ton of offspring from them!
My Drymaplaneta semivitta are doing very well, I am up to at least five large oothecae now, (it was six, but they ate one of them recently for no reason). All of these large oothecae are nice and healthy looking, so with any luck I will have a ton of nymphs soon! Quite the comeback for my culture, which was on the verge of crashing completely! 😄
Here's a picture of a female in the process of laying yet another ootheca:
Hopefully I'll have some little nymphs running around the enclosure soon!
So, after quite a bit of effort on my part, and one complete enclosure change, I was able to get my old Panchlora sp. "White" female to give birth to a small litter of nymphs! 😃 I haven't gotten a total head count, since I really don't want to disturb them too much, but I'm guessing there are less than a dozen total.
Here are some (rather poor) pictures of the cuties:
The female that gave birth to this litter looks like she's gonna die of old age soon, so my hope for more nymphs lies on my other two females, let's hope I can get them to reproduce too!
I am thinking about making a really nice enclosure, with lots of bark, dead leaves and New Zealand sphagnum moss incorporated into it, dumping all of my remaining individuals inside of it and just hoping for the best. It would be smaller than the gallon enclosure I had them in originally, sort of in between that and the cages they are in now in terms of size.
It would also have feeding areas on both sides of the enclosure, just in case the reason they were doing poorly in their original enclosure was because they couldn't find food consistently. I will also try to keep Sinella curviseta springtails out of the enclosure, and will only inoculate the enclosure with the small silver springtails, and maybe some small white ant springtails too. But we'll see, we'll see...
One of my Ischnoptera deropeltiformis "Ruby Red" finally matured into an adult male, so now I have one adult pair! 😆 These things have taken FOREVER to grow, I was getting worried my female may die off before a male matured in time to mate with her! Luckily that was not the case, so hopefully they will mate and my female will lay lots of fertile ooths!
Here are some pictures of the male:
I like the way the males look even more than the females, since they have longer wings and more vibrant red coloration!
Lastly, I am happy to say that one of my Eurycotis lixa matured the other day, I am pretty sure it is a male! This species is pretty large when mature, and they actually don't seem that bad for handling, the male rarely bit me when I held it, and didn't seem terribly skittish! (whereas I can't get my Eurycotis improcera to stay still for half a second!).
Here are some pictures of the adult male:
Note the slightly flattened, dented in hind legs, similar to the males of Drymaplanetta. The other four nymphs are all subadults too, and all look very plump, so I am pretty sure they will all be mature within a couple weeks! Let's hope I can breed them successfully! 🙂
Anyway, that's gonna do it for today, hope everyone enjoyed this post, will see you all next time! 😉
General commentary
ReplyDelete1: Hymenorus
Contrary to doubts in your old post, googling "hymenorus diet" shows that adults of various spp were noted to feed on pollen and surface growths such as lichen, so nonfeeding adults seem unlikely. To observe feeding behavior in insects, only make food available periodically. Digging them up and putting them on it also helps.
I am suspicious of the short adult lifespan, though. Did your previous adults ever reproduce? I know some darklings do have short adult stages, but perhaps adults cannot tolerate conditions larvae do well in?
2. Carrion project
Not in a good mood to play with dirty beetles after one of the mentioned pet vertebrates suddenly turned into carrion itself (wound infection?). Tubifex cleansing and sterile maggots are still our best bets for research
3. Plants
I fed a half-dead carabid that was most certainly not Amara a wet algae wafer. As mentioned, it is mostly starch, but also completely meatless. I would expect nearly any carabid to devour fruit, but this was quite surprising.
Ironically, the unidentified carabid shared its lodging with a cf. Amara. Even more ironically, the latter absolutely rejected the starchy wafer despite its granivorous reputation, and eagerly gnawed a meat-containing fish pellet.
Since most predators display omnivory, perhaps regularly offering plant matter might prove useful for tricky species (hint: carabid larva) or at least boost a spider or two. I'm willing to bet that even Dysdera will gorge on sugar.
4. Plants again
On the one hand, you refuse to buy vertebrate meat.
On the other hand, what occurs naturally may not always be "right" (ex: sloppy/inefficient body structures), and that whipscorpion was casually strolling around with a terrified Parcoblatta in arm. Yes, I know the woodroach was in a wood buffet several days before, but it would make more sense to me if it was gassed with anesthetics (or something similar) before getting eaten. Similar issues apply to difficult-to-raise insects
?
(again, no hostilities/accusations are intended)
1. I've seen adult Hymenorus feed on cat food in captivity, and visit flowers in nature, so they definitely feed, don't know when or why I said otherwise. 0_o I realize now that cat food may not be the best adult diet though, next time around I'll be feeding adults various fruits, and maybe sugar water like I would any other nectar feeding beetle.
DeleteI do still think they have a naturally short lifespan though, most nectar feeders do, (yeah yeah that's stereotypical, and quite possibly wrong in this case, but it's what I'm going with). I will also try keeping adults in a very well ventilated enclosure next year, as well as keep some in with the larvae, and see which do better.
2. Aww, sorry to hear that. :(
3. That's not all that surprising, many Carabid adults are far more omnivorous than most people think.
I don't know about Carabid larvae though, they seem to reject even dog/cat/fish foods, freshly killed or slow live prey seems to be a must for most larvae, and I doubt they would accept fruits or veggies of any kind, (there are probably a few exceptions within the Harpalinae though...). I suspect it has to do with the overall jaw structure of many Carabid larvae, Pasimachus in particular have very thin, sickle like jaws, not strong enough to chew up most plant matter, (with the exception of bananas maybe?). Too late to test with my Pasimachus larvae though, it's made itself a pupal cell! 😁
4. Yes, I do have some conflicting moral thoughts when it comes to feeding my carnivorous invertebrates, but the way I justify it is that my carnivorous pets NEED to eat bugs to survive, whereas most humans can live a vegan lifestyle and still be very healthy. Additionally insects have a much more limited nervous system than vertebrates do, and thus don't experience any emotional distress when being killed, it's just instincts.
Albeit, that holds true for most non mammalian vertebrates too, so it does make me a bit of a hypocrite, I know that. But countless insects get killed when farming the vegetables I eat, who knows how many bugs I kill when I drive my car to go shopping, etc., as a person I have to draw a line of feeling bad somewhere, otherwise I'd be driven mad by guilt and I've drawn the line at the invertebrate level.
Thus I'm probably going to be outcast by most other vegans, and non-vegans will call me a huge hypocrite with no right to tell them they should stop eating meat. Basically, I'm in a real moral pickle lol!
(and no, my blogger account isn't out of trouble yet)
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