My first
Princisia vanwaerebeki "Big" adult has matured, the female from
last post! 😁 Looks perfectly pure too, now to see what the others will look like once mature! I sexed my group of five a few weeks ago, and was pleasantly surprised to find that I have one male and four females... Quite a nice sex ratio if you ask me! 😄
The other four nymphs are all varying wildly in coloration, the smallest looks normal for it's age, black with white thoracic pads spots, the second smallest already has adult coloration, despite being younger than this adult female was when she was still pitch black, my other subadult female is a dark brownish black, exhibiting no adult coloration whatsoever, and my one subadult male is mostly black with a
very faint yellow abdominal bordering and thoracic pad spots... Just goes to show how variable hisser nymph coloration can be, this is true even for pure stocks, the final adult coloration is what we need to look out for.
Anyways, here are some pictures of my adult female, about a day after maturing:
Looks to be exhibiting normal pure stock adult coloration to me! 😄 Do keep in mind that as she fattens up with food and brood, we'll be able to see her paler intersegmental membranes, which may give her the appearance of being "striped", but this is not the exoskeleton coloration, and
all roaches have pale intersegmental abdominal membranes, thus it is not real "striping" like what we see on the actual abdominal segments of tiger hissers, (
Gromphadorhina sp. "Tiger"/
P.vanwaerebeki "Tricolor") or hybrid
Princisia.
Also, I would like to address my labeling of these in my last few posts, I made up the strain name "Standard" and have been calling them
Princisia vanwaerebeki "Standard" because I thought these were the long time standard
Princisia strain, and indeed this
is the most widely available pure form of
Princisia out there.
Apparently though, in the US there supposedly used to be
another form of pure
Princisia actually called
P.vanwaerebeki "Standard" that apparently looked more like
G.portentosa in appearance, however that strain died out in culture years ago, and I've
never seen any pictures of them...
So, to prevent confusion with that old strain, I'll just label these as I've seen this particular strain/form labeled in Europe,
Princisia vanwaerebeki "Big". Some people do not label pure stock of this form with the strain name "Big" when selling them, like Roachcrossing and a few other vendors, and only use the species name when labeling them. However, without a distinct strain name they are more likely to be mixed with other strains of
Princisia, (most often hybrid strains), so in order to distinguish these from hybrids, and so people know what the supposed appearance of their animals should be, all PURE strains of
Princisia should have a special strain name.
While "Big" is kind of a redundant name, since this strain of
Princisia is just normal sized for this species and throws out both major and minor adults, that is the name that's been used for this form of
Princisia the longest, and is what I'll be going with. I suggest others working with pure stock of this strain do the same. I've edited my older posts so they all use the proper strain name now, as I don't want to spread any more misinformation.
Alrighty, that about does it for today's post, we got more on the way though, so stay tuned for some back to back posts, stay safe, and I'll see you all soon! 😉
