It seems the litter is at least 20-30 nymphs large, quite a nice brood size if this is indeed a pure Princisia strain, hopefully I'll be able to prove it is when the next generation of adults matures. 🤞 Let's hope the nymph survival rate is not too low, since young nymph die offs can be a problem with pure stock of this phenotype apparently.
Here are some pictures of the nymphs, plus my two adult females:
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| Babies!!! 😁 |
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| The small female who gave birth |
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| The older, larger, and hopefully gravid female |
As you can see, the smaller female has more dark orange abdominal margins, whereas the larger female has more yellowish margins. Also, the abdominal base coloration of the smaller female is ever so slightly more brownish, whereas the other female is definitely black. That's a little concerning, but a very slight difference in coloration, one that probably doesn't matter much, the pronotum structure of the males is going to be key to telling whether this strain is pure, so I'll be watching closely to see what all these nymphs look like when mature!
As for my Princisia vanwaerebeki "Tiger", kind of a bad news good news situation going on.
Bad news is, my female died some time ago, apparently one reason for her being so dark colored is that the exoskeletons of adults, females especially, dull with age, and apparently she was quite old and worn by the time I got her, I'm honestly surprised I got that brood out of her... Also, for whatever reason, my large male has had a genital prolapse, so his junk has just been hanging out for the past couple weeks. Thankfully every time I check on him, his genitals seem to be more and more retracted, so I'm thinking in another week or so he'll have pulled all that back in, so no worries.
As for the good news, the three nymphs that my old female gave birth to (I think there were more in the litter initially, but a couple nymphs were very weak, only three survived), have been doing very good, and are growing pretty fast. They're also rather striking in coloration, so I took some pictures of them, and of my older, minor male, since I haven't shown him off yet.
Here are some pictures of them:
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| 4th? instar nymph |
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| The old, minor male |
Apparently, another reason my female's coloration was so dark, and why the mesonotum and metanotums of my adult males (especially the minor male) are a brownish black rather than straight black, is because they originate from Kyle Kandillian's old stock, which while pure, was quite variable. Kyle had to replace his tigers recently after they crashed and he inadvertently hybridized his remaining females with Aeluropoda insignis, and his new culture, while descended from his old stock, was subsequently line bred by LimberLost Exotics for more consistent coloration, with darker thoracic segments, slightly thicker striping and a more stark black/white contrast on the abdomen (no brownish females).
The trade-off for that coloration is that Kyle no longer sees females with red spots on the sides of their pronotums, however that feature may still pop up in the stock me and Brandon have, which has evidently not been bred to eliminate variable coloration whatsoever... 😅
So, it's good to know that Brandon's stock is pure, just not as line bred for clean coloration. Hopefully out of my three small nymphs, I either have a pair, or all females that can mate with one of my adult males. 🤞😁
Well, that's gonna do it for this post, thanks for reading everyone, I hope you enjoyed, stay safe, and I'll see you all next time! 😉
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