Myrmecophilus Babies!!!

My Myrmecophilus cf. manni ant crickets bred for me!!! 😁 This marks a first for the hobby, I know several people who've attempted to culture species in this genus, but none were able to keep them alive long. Not only have mine all been doing pretty well, with no die offs as far as I can tell, but I just found hatchlings in their jar today! 😊

Unfortunately, I'm still not 100% sure what it is that they're eating, but I do find them on or near the apple slices and chick feed I offer them fairly often, I stopped feeding them artificial pollen about a month ago, and didn't see any changes after doing so. The substrate contains some rotten wood materials, which they could be nibbling on, but I'm unsure if that's a necessity or not. I'll have to experiment more in the future once my culture is big enough to split into two...

Might be worth noting that I've been keeping them on the cool side, trying to keep them from temps higher than 75F°, which I fear could be harmful to them since they spend their lives inside ant colonies where it's somewhat cool... Could be fine keeping them warmer though, suppose I'll experiment with that in the future too.

Anyways, here are some pictures, first of an adult, then of a hatchling, and finally one of their current setup. Unfortunately I was only able to get ventral shots of the hatchling against the side of the jar, I tried but I could not get a dorsal shot to save my life... 😂

Adult male, with small silver springtail to the left for scale.

The little baby! 😍

The enclosure.

I'm very glad I was able to breed these cuties, hopefully I can rear them up and get a sizeable colony established here soon! Definitely doesn't seem like they need ants to survive or breed, which is awesome! 😄

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