My collection is experiencing a small mite crisis, there is this small, round, red mite species that seems similar to grain mites in habits, but more damaging to my small Ectobiid species than any mite I have previously encountered. 😩 I am not exactly sure where they came from, I'm thinking they came in with my Dorylaea orini though, as I saw them in their enclosure first.
So, I've had to carefully re-house the infested species, and throw out their old enclosures too, as the mites seem pretty resistant to my sterilization methods. Luckily, I think I've nipped this problem in the bud, they aren't in many of my enclosures, and only seem to do well when there is a buildup of leftover food and/or a lack of a thriving springtail colony. Hopefully once I've finished cleaning out the last enclosures, the mites will be gone for good.
The species that were infested with these mites are Dorylaea orini, (which I've moved to a larger enclosure now), Cariblatta minima, Alobates pensylvanicus, Therea olegrandjeani, Balta notulata, and a pair of Oniscus asellus. The only cultures I still have to de-mite are my T.olegrandjeani, and B.notulata.
Speaking of Alobates pensylvanica, I suppose I may as well give you all an update on them. A couple of months ago I rehoused them to a larger enclosure, thinking the larvae would appreciate it, and the adults would lay more eggs, (all of the egg clutches they produced had started to mold over in their old setup). However, the new enclosure had a lot more ventilation than their previous one, and I underestimated how fast the substrate would dry out.
So, within a few days the enclosure got really dry, and most of the larvae died off. I re-hydrated the substrate, but that didn't seem to help all that much, and the adults didn't seem inclined to lay any more eggs either. So, I moved the adults back to a smaller enclosure, with moist substrate and less ventilation. I dug through the big enclosure and only found one larva unfortunately, which I moved to a small deli cup with crushed rotten wood as the substrate.
The adults are looking pretty ragged now, and I'm not sure that I'll be able to successfully rear the larva up to adulthood, so it looks like I've failed at breeding this species. 😢 Oh well, maybe I'll try again one day, we'll see! At least now I know that this species hates dryness, at least as larvae, and adults like to lay eggs in crevices, like in between bark pieces, or in between the enclosure walls and the substrate.
Well, that's going to do it for today, I hope everyone enjoyed this post, will see you all next time! 😉
How dare you get an Alobates cage filled with mites! ;)
ReplyDeleteMy cages are very miteproof, because carabs and tenebs are quite tolerant of dryness. Did you demite the adults when they arrived in the mail?
Haha well they had a very small population of the mites compared to my roaches, I'm just rehousing anything with them now, to try and nip this situation in the bud.
DeleteAlmost none of my Tenebs have mite problems, but this species is more susceptible to them because they don't like dry conditions. :/
No I did not, but they certainly don't seem to be ground zero for this particular mite infestation.
The adults are almost certainly more tolerant than their thin-skinned grubs, so you can/could have use(d) that to your advantage in the past/future.
DeleteBasically, yes.
DeleteThe adults didn't seem to do well at all when they were kept dry though, so I wouldn't want to subject them to that anyway.
In any case, I've stopped all efforts to eradicate the mites, because I soon found out that almost all my enclosures have them in small amounts. When springtails (and other mite species), are present, the mites seem to stay low in number, and they don't actually bother anything but tiny Ectobiids even in large numbers. The same can be said of Sinella curviseta, which are in all my enclosures too, so I'm not too concerned.
Kyle, Orin and a friend of mine have these mites too, and seeing as they are very secretive compared to other mites, I'm gonna assume a lot more people have them as well. So even if I did try and sterilize all of my enclosures, I could easily get them again in a shipment of roaches, and all would be for naught.
I "envy" you so much! I toss in a few garden carabids covered in red phoretics into my teneb cage, and feed everyone with fruitegtables daily, and the arachnids apparently all vanished by the fifth day or so!
DeleteWell the mites on your Carabids may specifically need flesh of some sort in their diet, at least, that's what I'm guessing, if they've all disappeared by now!
DeleteI've got around 4-5 different mite species in my collection now, so far none of them seem to be too troublesome as long as proper measures are put in place. These red mites must have reached plague populations in my Cariblatta minima enclosure because the roaches out-competed the springtails I put in there, and there was leftover food I couldn't easily remove around their food bowl. That all created the perfect conditions for the mites to breed, unchecked. In most of my other enclosures, it would be a LOT harder for this to happen.
Unlikely, the carabs were also fed with wet dried bloodworms. Since the food all dries periodically and it is the only moisture in the cage, the mites (being smaller and more watery) must have been unable to resist.
DeletePS: the blog pics are still missing due to user-unfriendly technology. Once I work out the kinks I will pull up a tenet vid
DeleteTenet = teneb
DeleteAutocorrect is worse than useless for enthusiasts
I see, the lack of a consistent moisture source was probably the reason the mites died off then, most commonly encountered species can't withstand totally dry conditions for long.
DeleteGood to know, hope you can get that all in order, and I can't wait to see the video! :)
Yes, autocorrect really sucks, luckily you can usually add words to the built in dictionary, Tenebrionid and Eleodes for example are registered words on my tablet now, if I write Eleodex or Eleodez it automatically tries to change it into Eleodes! :)
Actually, two vids, one for each teneb.
DeleteRight now I am trying to catch Coniontis displaying its vibratory song. Quite troublesome, but bugguide will be excited when the first-ever vid hits youtube. This is a nearly undocumented behavior, after all =)
Nice, hope you can get footage of the drumming behavior! It's hard to catch unique behavior like that on camera, especially since many inverts get spooked easily.
DeleteFor example, I keep seeing my adult E.lixa females feeding off of the male's backs, apparently the males secrete some pale liquid in between their abdominal and thoracic segments to attract the females, then they slyly try to hook up with them while they are feeding. I've NEVER heard of Eurycotis displaying this behavior, my adults are easily startled though, and whenever I move the enclosure to a more accessible place they disperse. -_-
That lixa thing is a common behavior. According to that roach book from researchgate, many males of various spp feed females like this.
DeleteAlso, I seem to be having the reverse problem: the Coniontis is too happy and sits for many minutes between each move. The only footage of it I have involves a mostly- sedate Coniontis and the matte darkling pacing back and forth frantically like the Coniontis used to in the background. Hilarious, but sad for the stressed-looking opatrine...
DeleteI will email you a copy if you like
Yes, it's a common mating tactic for many species of roaches, but I've never heard of anyone documenting this behavior in E.lixa specifically. Technically, most E.lixa behavior could be considered undocumented though, not much research has been done on them, on account of them being one of the more obscure Blattodeans.
DeleteHaha, that sounds just like Coniontis, (and a lot of inverts TBH), just when you pull the camera out and try to get a video of them, they just sit there and do nothing... Meanwhile, if you try taking a PICTURE, half the time they will run like there's no tomorrow...
Will check out the video on the blog shortly! :)
Personally, I think that the Lixa courtship may be interesting to capture but nothing of too much sci value. It’s basically like documenting feeding vegetables to Tanystoma; new, but highly unsurprising... :)
DeleteI suggest turning attention to your own Coniontis spp, since different sp can have different vibratory songs.
Yeah, I guess that's true lol!
DeleteAnd unfortunately, I highly doubt I'll be able to capture any Coniontis thumping on film, because both of my cameras SUCK at picking up audio, always comes out kinda crappy, and you almost have to yell to be heard on them. I don't think they would pick up the faint sound of the Coniontis vibrating at all. :/
You don’t need the audio, just video of them doing it with explanations.
DeleteGuess I could do that, would be nice to record the vibrations of each species though, and see if it varies from species to species.
DeleteClarification: it does vary between at least two species (the ones I kept).
DeleteAh OK, well then it would definitely be even more valuable to pick up those vibrations on film! I wonder just how expensive of a camera you'd need for that... :p
DeleteYou know, we need not record the vibration itself. These beetles aren’t like katydids with subtle inter-subspecies song variations. The current small Coniontis buzzes rapidly in one spurt, so its song is a short one-spurter. The big Coniontis I had mentioned in blog posts had a song of three/four distinct spurts, so its behavior while tapping consisted of three/four tapping bouts in short succession.
DeleteBasically, record a soundless video = record the song differences. Also unlike katydids, a Coniontis song changes based on what it sits on. If I had a fast enough tap machine, I could easily imitate the small Coniontis’s song!
Note: journal post was updated, you may want to reread the post and comments
Ah, that's very true, so all we need is to SEE how many times they tap when they call! :) Hopefully with the next generation of Coniontis adults I get, I'll be able to record some footage of them tapping!
Delete=)
DeleteEdit: posted that vid on blog. Still a fail, Coniontis slept after eating :/
ReplyDelete