Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Eleodes osculans Adults & New Oniscus asellus Morphs!

My Eleodes osculans larvae have all pupated and eclosed, all at around the same time. I only had 2-3 casualties out of two dozen individuals, due to complications when pupating, so overall these have proven very easy to rear!

The adult have this curious habit of "clumping" together in large numbers, it's both very odd and strangely adorable! 😊 Here are some pictures of this clumping behavior:




I'm really loving this species so far, with any luck they'll produce some larvae for me, which I'll likely put up for sale once they reach a reasonable size, since I'm sure I'll have way more than I'll need for my own breeding! 😄

Two new morphs have popped up in my main Oniscus asellus colony recently, both of which look rather cool and will hopefully be easy to isolate! 

First off, I have two of these unusually dark individuals, their white skirting seems to be almost completely absent, and their whole bodies are a dark brown color with some yellow and white mottling. I've isolated them to a small container with moist coconut fiber as the substrate and dead leaves for hides/food. I will likely upgrade their enclosure size soon.

Here are some pictures of them:





And then, I found two light yellowish small juveniles, this is the morph I'm the most excited about. Unfortunately, one of the two individuals seems to have disappeared, I couldn't find it in it's cage yesterday, it may have been eaten by the other individual, or it may have died of some other cause. It could also just be hiding really well, we'll see. 

Luckily my remaining individual seems to be doing very well, and it has gotten big enough for me to say that it's current coloration is likely permanent or very close to the permanent coloration. Here are some pictures of the remaining individual:




Now, unless more pop up in my main colony, it's more than likely that I'm gonna have to breed these morphs with normal O.asellus to get offspring, and hope that some of the resulting offspring share the same traits as their special looking parents. Some more may still pop up in my main colony though, I'll be checking that container pretty often in search of new morphs!

Well, that's gonna do it for today, I hope everyone enjoyed, will see you all next post! 😉

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