Took a couple pictures of the colony swarming a piece of apple:
Really love this species, I just wish they were more appreciated in the hobby...
My Yuukianura aphoruroides have also been thriving, I actually have two separate cultures going now. Interestingly, they do not seem to mind Stratiolaelaps scimitus in their colonies at all, and if said mites actually eat any of them, the springtails seem to breed fast enough to not be hampered by this at all. Really though it seems like once they wiped the fungus gnats out of the deli cups, the S.scimitus have been dwindling in numbers, so it seems to me like for whatever reason, they Yuukianura just aren't very palatable to them. 🤔 Just something interesting I figured I'd mention.
Here are some pictures of a group swarming some oatmeal:
Such vibrantly colored springtails, now I really wanna try the Lobella sp. "Thailand Red"...
My Tagaloblatta sp. "Okinawa" colony has exploded, which is great, but upon closer examination I've happened upon something interesting... Some adults in the culture are microapterous, and some are macroapterous. I thought at first this was sex linked, with the females being microapterous, and males macroapterous... And then I found these:
 |
| Bow-chicka-bow-wow |
Yes, that is a mating pair of microapterous adults. These are definitely Tagaloblatta, the only currently described species in the genus (from the Philippines) is also microapterous in both sexes.
Now, some genera, like Compsodes and Byrsotria, have variable wing length in males, with both macroapterous and brachyapterous males popping up in the same populations. I thought maybe something like that was happening with the males of this culture. And then I found female macroapterous individuals. 🙃 Here's one actually laying an ooth:
So, what does this mean? Well, it could be that both sexes of this Tagaloblatta species have wildly variable wing length. OR, somehow, two completely different species were collected together, have been persisting in the same colonies for a few years now in the EU (and now US) hobby. The nymphs and ooths mostly look the same to me, so it's hard to tell...
But, I've isolated some of the fully winged adults, and will also isolate some of the microapterous ones too. If both colonies produce mixed wing length adults in the next generation, we'll know it's the same species. But if both cultures only produce same looking adults in each colony, we'll know it's two different species. Personally, I'm leaning towards the latter considering the entire morphology of the macroapterous adults is quite different from that of the microapterous ones, ignoring the wing length.
Well, that does it for this post, thanks for reading, hope everyone enjoyed, and I'll see you all next time! 😉
No comments:
Post a Comment