Full Circle

Most of my Apsena sp. "Kuna" larvae are at their mature size, and thus I've been moving many of them to a pupation enclosure, (which is just a 16 oz Tupperware with an inch of moist, compressed coconut fiber, and a little bit of cross and lid ventilation).

Now I showed a photo of a pupa in my last post, which then molted into an adult on the 4th of July. Seems it takes pupae 6-8 days to develop on average, which is pretty dang short. Then again, the room they are being kept in is pretty warm during most of the day, around 85-90F°, so that could be accelerating their growth quite a bit.

Interestingly, the teneral adults can take 2-3 days to darken up completely, (depending on the ambient humidity), which is a bit unusual, because in most Tenebrionid species I've kept, teneral adults gain their final coloration within 24 hours no matter the humidity, (though they take much longer to harden completely).

So all in all, it seems the time spent from egg to adult is only around 2-3 months, which is pretty short for a desert dwelling Tenebrionid. At 80-90F°, eggs take 1-2 weeks to hatch, larvae mature in about a month and a half to two months, and pupae only take around a week to develop, with adults taking another few days to darken and harden up.

Anyways, here are some pictures showcasing various stages of development!

Mature larva

Freshly molted, teneral adult:

Day old adult

Fully darkened adults:

Well, that about sums up my experience breeding these little cuties, hopefully this series of posts proves useful to anyone planning on breeding Apsena spp. in the future! 😁

Well that does it for this post, I hope everyone enjoyed it, thanks for reading, I'll see you all next time! 😉