Thursday, June 2, 2022

The Return of Pie-Dish Beetles!

Roachcrossing April Package Series Pt. 5/5
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Well after finding out that seemingly ALL captive stock descended from my old colony of Embaphion muricatum are infested with entomophagous Trichoderma mold, I've resigned myself to needing to source wild stock of that species again if I want to culture them in the future...

However, thankfully one species of Embaphion that was lost from culture a few years back has returned, from a new locality, and they are obviously not infested with any fungal pathogens. Reintroducing to my collection, Embaphion contusum contusum! 😁 Kyle's the one who brought these back, collected from Las Cruces, NM, and he's coined the common name "Bruiser Pie-dish Beetle" for this species, no doubt in reference to the Latin "contusum". These are arguably easier to breed than E.muricatum (which are already quite easy under normal circumstances), and with the five adults Kyle sent me I've already gotten a lot of offspring from them. 😄

I've got them set up in a well ventilated gallon container with an inch of old used coconut fiber as the substrate. They've got toilet paper rolls as hides and one third of the substrate is kept moist, the rest bone dry. Keeping them at room temps, and am offering them dog food as the staple diet.

Here are some pictures of one of the adult females:







Such a nice species, this whole genus is quite unique, and I hope I can get more representatives of this genus in my collection in the near future. 😁

Anyways, that wraps it up for this series! Thanks to Kyle for the awesome package, be sure to check out Roachcrossing.com if you're interested in buying some neat inverts. 😄 Thanks everyone for reading, hope you enjoyed, stay safe, stay buggy, and I'll see you all next time! 😉

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