New Darklings from Fort Stockton, TX! (Pt. 3)

Gabe Shaheen is such a dear, you think those Eleodes were all he had in store for us? Nope, my just man sent me even more desert beetles to work with, which I am quite excited to work with! 😁

Let's start with the unusual Triorophus sp., a genus I've seen online when browsing Bugguide.net many times before, but have never had the pleasure of working with before now. I don't know of anyone who has kept or bred these before, they are in the tribe Edrotini, which is home to the notoriously difficult to breed Edrotes spp.... Hopefully these will prove easier to culture than that genus, fingers crossed!

I have mine set up in a well ventilated container with a sand and coco fiber mix for substrate, about an inch deep. I have pieces of bark on top for hides, and will be keeping a third of the enclosure humid, the rest dry. For food I'll offer dog food. With any luck they will breed, Gabe did send around 6 or so, and they are of varying sizes, so I should have males and females in there.

Here are some pictures of the cute little buggers:

Very odd looking darklings, would really love to breed them and document what the larvae look like! 

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We also have this little weirdo that was thrown in with the Triorophus, only one, and in fact since it's almost the same size as them and the same color, I almost mistook it for one of the Triorophus at a glance. It seems to also be something in the tribe Edrotini, I was thinking either Melanastus or Trimytis, so I once again asked my friend I Fox for ID help, and he said they looked to be Trimytis.

I'm actually just leaving it in with the Triorophus, since it likely needs very similar conditions to them, and I would have set it up basically identically to them... So to save space I'll just keep them together, and hopefully if both species breed their larvae won't be very aggressive towards each other. 🤷

Here are some pics of the chonk:

Fingers crossed this one's a gravid female, and that I can breed both species successfully, that would be awesome, and possibly a first for both! I actually don't know if ANY Edrotini have been bred in captivity before, seems like getting them to oviposit in the first place is the biggest hurdle...

Anyways, that's gonna do it for this post, thanks for reading everyone, hope you enjoyed, stay safe, and I'll see you all next time! 😉