Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Chalcolepidius Stress, Porcellionides Positives, & Teneb Updates!

Well, Chalcolepidius are proving to be a much larger hassle to breed than I had anticipated... I've gotten NOTHING from my C.smaragdinus yet, and have only gotten 6 larvae and 2 eggs from my C.webbi so far. I'm down to one female webbi now, and they've been extremely hesitant to oviposit, seemingly picking crumpled paper towels at random to lay 3-5 eggs in at a time. However the way they lay the eggs and adhere them to the paper towels makes it extremely easy to tear the eggs apart while looking for them, and they also oddly cover the eggs in their own frass, which makes it difficult to tell how many eggs are in a mass.

So, progress has been slow, but at least somewhat steady with the C.webbi, hopefully I'll get more eggs and larvae from my remaining female before she does. And it'd be nice to get a SINGLE egg from my smaragdinus... 🙃

Anyways, here are some pictures of my smaragdinus enjoying the sun:





Such a pretty genus of Elateridae, if only they were easier to breed... 😭

Next up, my Porcellionides sp. "Big Pine Key" have been doing very well and breeding decently. 😁 I noticed while digging around the colony that there were a number of high orange males in the mix, not a more necessarily, more so a neat example of the natural variation of this species/locality. 😁

Here are some pictures of the orange bois:










Such a lovely species, really one of my favorite isopods ever. 😊

Lastly, a couple of Teneb updates. I found eggs in my Edrotes setup!!! 😁 They'll apparently lay in fine clay just fine, and I'm kinda surprised with how large the eggs are!

Here are some pics of them:




They do not seem to have a preference as to where they lay their eggs, and seem content laying them in both the dry and more humid areas of their container. This is phenomenal news, can't wait to see larvae! 😁

And in other awesome darkling news, I found larvae in my Trogloderus skillmani (identified to species for me by Andrew Johnston) setup!!! 😃 I've tried three times to breed this genus, and have failed each time. For this species at least, it seems the key was using a fine clay substrate. So happy to have finally gotten offspring from this genus, I'll have to snap pictures of the larvae as they get bigger. 😄

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

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