Monday, December 14, 2020

Carabus Larva Surprise!!!

Huh, so, I've been keeping my Carabus nemoralis pair cool, humid, and in the dark, kinda trying to simulate the cooler seasons of the month, so that way in the Spring they'd breed and oviposit properly, because I had assumed they laid eggs in the Spring, not late Fall/Winter... But either I'm wrong about that, or my Carabus have really bad internal clocks, because the other day while doing maintenance on them I saw a couple big eggs through the bottom of the enclosure. 😯

So I just dug around in their enclosure and found half a dozen eggs, (a couple of which look to be duds or were damaged by the digging activities of the adults), and a single first instar larva!!! 😁 
Unfortunately though, I isolated the eggs to a minimally ventilated 2 oz deli cup with a thin layer of moist coconut fiber at the bottom, but apparently the eggs are SUPER fragile and should NOT be moved, as all of them died shortly afterwards... 😣
I moved the larva to an identical setup, (but with a chopped up Eleodes larva to feed on), and it's been doing good at least. 
I also decided to house the adult male separately from the female, just in case he tries eating any of the eggs or the larvae, (which the female could potentially do herself, no reason to have twice the danger in the enclosure unnecessarily). Hopefully the female keeps on laying eggs, I had wondered why she looked so thin compared to the male despite me feeding her plenty of food, guess she's just been converting it all to brood... And from now on I won't be removing the eggs, just larvae as they pop up.

Here are some pictures of the eggs and the larva:











So cool, looks like I've passed the first hurdle, getting offspring! Now, to see how easy it is to rear the larvae, and hope that the female lays more eggs... 😅

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

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