Some "Meh" Quality Perisphaerus Pics

My Perisphaerus pygmaeus are doing well, and I think, when that first female gave birth in this new culture a little while ago, another one must have given birth at around the same time without me knowing, because there are about 20 small nymphs in the enclosure right now (all the same size), and it's just not possible that one female gave birth to that many nymphs! 😂 So yay, two of my females gave birth shortly after I acquired them LOL! All the nymphs are doing well and growing steadily too. 😄

Anyways, I took some pictures of a few of my adults recently, mainly to try and get some better shots of the adult males and their pronotum structure, as well as to showcase the size disparity between adult males and females of this particular Perisphaerus species. This is because a friend of mine, Martinho, who runs the lovely site The Wild Martin, is keeping a very similar looking strain of Perisphaerus from Macau. At first we both thought they were just P.pygmaeus, but after seeing pictures of the adult males from his culture, I noticed they had much more broad and convex looking pronotums, and they are also much more similar in size to the adult females of their species than the diminutive males of pygmaeus are to their females.

After noticing these differences, and consulting the 2018 Chinese Perisphaerinae revision, I have tentatively identified his Perisphaerus as P.punctatus, which look quite similar to pygmaeus but have actually been collected from mainland China and Vietnam, (whereas I think pygmaeus are only known from Taiwan).

Interestingly, both the females of punctatus and pygmaeus have a thin layer of golden setae on their last few ventral segments, (like those of Pseudoglomeris tarsalis), however said hairs seem to be shorter and sparser on pygmaeus than on punctatus. 

Anyways, here are those pictures, which are so-so in quality, but were helpful enough for me to be confident that his Perisphaerus are a completely different species than mine:

Hard to see, but you can just barely make out some of the golden hairs on the last ventral segment.

So yay, there's another Perisphaerus in culture, that's actually being bred with good success! 😁 Several Perisphaerus have come and gone from culture, often because only large female nymphs of said species were ever collected, but also sometimes because even decent breeding groups happen to be sent to people who don't fully comprehend Perisphaerinae care. I'm glad to see Martinho's Perisphaerus punctatus are thriving for him, and wish him luck in culturing them for years to come! 

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