My Arenivaga bolliana "Del Rio, TX - Dark form" are finally starting to mature! 😄 The first female matured on 6/24, with most of the others maturing soon afterwards, and the first male matured yesterday. I had been keeping the males separately from the females, and moved the females to a warmer spot to speed their growth up and get them synchronized with the males in growth.
Unfortunately as I've experienced in the past, keeping A.bolliana excessively warm, especially in a small container, can make them come out as pretty small adults, and that's definitely been the case this time. However I really don't care about that, just needed to ensure that I would get offspring from this generation, now that they're all synced up, from here on out I can keep them cooler and not have any stunting issues. 🙂
Here are some pictures of the adults:
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| Adult male |
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| Adult female |
Check out that adult male! Almost looks like a lightly speckled male Polyphaga aegyptiaca, that's what makes this strain special, that super dark base coloration! 😍 Compare to adult males of the normal A.bolliana phenotype and you can see just how different this locality is!
Weirdly, I only ended up with two males this generation, but hey, I'm not complaining, as there is roughly a dozen females for them to mate, so I should get a TON of offspring this generation, and will for sure be offering up some for sale in a matter of months!
Anyways, that's gonna do it for this post, thanks for reading everyone, hope you all enjoyed, stay safe, and I'll see you next time! 😉
Anyways, that's gonna do it for this post, thanks for reading everyone, hope you all enjoyed, stay safe, and I'll see you next time! 😉
Excellent work. To me these seem a little like Gyna species: their wings look very sculptural.
ReplyDeleteThis also makes me think: I'm expecting a handful of A. tesselata nymphs from the only UK seller I could find. They're all but impossible to find on the local scene so I want to maximise that slow, slow breeding rate. I might try separating the males and females too.
Yeah, in a way they do look like matte, hairy Gyna spp..
DeleteWell the nice thing about Archimandrita is males live a decent bit, I don't think people usually have an issue with males maturing before females and dying. Think it's more of an issue of females taking forever to give birth, which can be fixed by offering heat, ensuring they have lots of space and vertical bark to rest on, and a deep, organically rich substrate.
I've recently heard that, about giving them vertical space. Pity I already had a flat box set up for them! Oh well, two out of three ain't bad, and the third is easily remedied. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteYeah, a lot of people just assume they are like a lot of other "substrate swimmers" and don't need vertical space, but peppereds and some of the larger Blaberus species really do need a lot of vertical hides as adults. No problem, hope your Archimandrita do well for you! :D
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