FINALLY, after years of dead ends and dud oothecae, I have gotten my hands on four nymphs of Polyphaga obscura, from the locality of "Turpan, Xinjiang, China". A parthenogenetic line, and with locality data as well, this strain of obscura supposedly gets as large as P.saussurei (if not larger).
While mine are only medium sized nymphs, it's already easy to see the difference between them and saussurei. P.saussurei nymphs are far more colorful at this life stage, and even when adults have some more dorsal patterning/spots on them compared to the darker P.obscura.
I have them set up in a well ventilated enclosure with a couple inches of coconut fiber/sand mix, topped with leaf litter. I'm keeping a third of the substrate moist, the rest dry, and have them at around 80-85F°. I'm offering dog food as the staple diet.
Here are some pictures of one of the obscura nymphs, compared to a saussurei nymph of the same size:
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| P.obscura |
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| P.saussurei |
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| P.saussurei (Top) VS P.obscura (Bottom) |
Unfortunately, I've failed at establishing a colony of Rhabdoblatta imperatrix. When I first got my group of 10 nymphs, I immediately split them evenly between myself and Brandon Maines. However, much to our dismay, it's become increasingly clear that they came in infected with Serratia... both our groups were doing fine as small nymphs up until a few molts from adulthood, and that's when they started molting out with wrinkled, spotty exoskeletons (a common sign of Serratia infection in my experience). Neither me nor Brandon have frequent Serratia outbreaks in our collections, not anymore at least, so the fact that both of us had these issues suggests it was something they came in infected with.
It's around this time that a majority of ours started dying off due to mismolts. Either they'd die before fully exiting their skins, or molt out so deformed that they died not long afterwards. While at least a couple of the deaths in my group seem to have been due to a lack of suitable vertical molting areas (which do appear to be a necessity for this species), most of the other mismolts seem to have been Serratia related complications.
Out of 5 males and 5 females (a shockingly even sex ratio), split between me and Brandon, only 2 males and 1 female made it to adulthood. Said female came out a bit deformed, with a wrinkled exoskeleton texture and warped wings (common results of Serratia infection). She aborted her first internal oothecae after about a month of maturity. It came out covered in tough, foamy white deposits, which is unusual.
She was still alive though, so I was hopeful she would produce another oothecae. However about a month later, she aborted her second ooth, and then died shortly afterwards.😩 A very unfortunate end to this project, I was really hoping to establish them in the hobby here. Hopefully I can acquire more healthy stock in the future, but I'm not sure how likely that will be.
In more random but equally unfortunate news, someone randomly sent me a couple WC Liphistius sp. "Vietnam" females along with some roaches I'd traded them for. Unfortunately I don't think they were kept very well beforehand, and were shipped rather poorly IMO, so they lasted only a week after I received them before both dying off.
But, I got some pictures of the largest one while it was still alive, and figure I might as well post them here:
Very pretty and ancient looking spiders, I'd love to work with and attempt to breed this genus one day, preferably with CB or at least better acclimated WC individuals next time. 😅
One last sad update before I get to a more positive one, I lost my entire Eupolyphaga sinensis "Peking, China" colony due to entomophagous fungus infection. 😠So, no locality data E.sinensis for the US hobby I guess. I almost lost my "White Eye" sinensis to this same issue, but thankfully I have seemingly pulled them out of this infection.
Now for a more interesting and positive update, my Blattidae sp. "China" pair made it to adulthood and have produced a bunch of offspring! After seeing adults in person I initially assumed they were Blatta orientalis, however I noticed some differences between them and the normal hobby stock B.orientalis that had me second guessing this ID. However I only had pictures of hobby stock B.orientalis to go off of... so I had my good friend and enabler Alan Jeon send me some to compare to these Chinese Blatta. 😂 After comparing the two stocks in person, it seems to me that the Chinese stock may be an undescribed Blatta, or at the very least a very unique locality of orientalis (if only this stock actually had locality info... 😩).
Here are some photos of the sp. "China" and true B.orientalis:
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| sp. "China" male |
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| sp. "China" female |
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| sp. "China" pair |
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| orientalis (left) VS sp. "China" (right) males |
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| orientalis (right) VS sp. "China" (left) males |
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| orientalis males |
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| orientalis female |
Some of the differences I notice between the males are differences in styli lengths, pronotum shape, wing/exoskeleton texture, wing shape, and the terminal abdominal segments. Females of the two strains look pretty much identical to me. Hopefully I can get a definitive ID on these sp. "China" in the future, but for now I won't hold my breath.
In any case, I now have healthy cultures of both of these, and I am making the B.orientalis available now if anyone wants those (I feel like I often have people asking if I sell orientalis, for whatever reason, so now I do). The sp. "China" will probably be available in the near future as well.
Lastly, I would like to point out that my Pseudoglomeris semisulcata have produced yet another litter since my last post about them! And the nymphs from the last two litters are growing well. So this species is going strong, and hopefully next year I can show off some adult males!
Well, that does it for this post, thanks for reading, hope everyone enjoyed, and I'll see you all next time! 😉
