Miscellaneous Winter Updates

Let's start off with kind of a bittersweet Plectoptera poeyi update here. Despite doing well initially, the survival rate of the later instars proved to be rather poor, and I lost quite a few due to springtail stress as well I think, as well as a possible lack of ventilation. I moved them to a new setup but am down to two adult females and an adult male, literally the EXACT number and sex ratio I started this colony with, weird... 😕 

I had a third adult female, but lost her stupidly due to putting her in a catch cup with a little glob of silicone grease at the bottom... She ran into said blob and despite me spraying her off she did not recover, completely lost control of her hind legs and died. 😭 Sucks because she was gravid AF at the time too. Oh well, lesson learned, I will not be using silicone grease in empty catch cups anymore.

At least the other two females have been laying pretty prolifically, I do not think I'll be selling from this next generation at all though, not with the big die offs I had. Here's hoping I get F2 babies to begin with, and can make it to F3 too... 🤞

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Also, I never updated y'all on this, but my lone female Blatta orientalis nymph matured months ago! She's laid a couple ooths too, so we'll see if I can induce parthenogenesis in this female and get her to make viable ooths with female clones of herself inside! 🤞😁 Might all just be duds that never develop though, in fact that is the more probable outcome.

Anyways, here are some pics of her:

Pretty cool looking for a "pest" roach, hopefully I can get her to miraculously become parthenogenetic, we'll see I guess! 😅

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I am happy to announce that I got a few of my Eleodes spinipes macrura to pupate successfully, with more isolated and pre-pupal already. 😁

I isolated large larvae in decently ventilated 4 oz deli cups filled with a sand and coco fiber substrate mix, which some larvae burrowed down into to make pupal cells, but others just scratched out bottoms of their cells near the tops of the container and let the limited airspace above the substrate act as the roof of their cells.

Here are some pics of one of the first pupae:

My current pupation setup.

Fingers crossed for high pupal survival rates, and for some good sized adults! 😁

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