As for their identity, I'm not sure. I was not able to key them out purely by range and visual appearance, I'll have to wait for somebody to dissect them before coming to any conclusions in their ID.
I have them set up in a well ventilated enclosure with an inch or two of a coconut fiber and sand mixture (more coco fiber than sand) as their substrate, with a third of it kept moist, the rest dry. The substrate is topped with leaf litter, and in addition to that I am feeding them dog food. Their enclosure is kept at around 75-85F°.
Here are some photos of an adult pair:
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| Male |
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| Female |
A really cute little species, I especially like the relatively solid dark wings on the males! Hopefully they'll breed well for me, the females are already laying ooths, so that's a good sign!
I recently acquired Cubaris sp. "Green Lazer" from a local keeper, and I gotta say the colors on these guys are really cool! Unfortunately they're one of those species who's colors do not come out well on camera, but I tried my best. 😅
I have them in a well ventilated shoebox with a thin layer of coconut fiber substrate, topped in coconut coir chunks, leaf litter and bark. I'm keeping them on a 60/40 humidity gradient erring on the moist side, and at around 75-80F°. I am offering them dog food and fish food pellets as their supplemental diet.
Here are the best pics I could get of them to show off their opalescent sheen, unfortunately they don't look all that green in these pics... but in person that yellow definitely has a greenish tint to it!
A cute species that I hope will breed well for me. I only started with a 6 count but I have confirmed that I have pairs in there, so any day now I'm expecting to see mancae... 🤞
I recently was given the opportunity to work with Rochaina yet again! This time, an ootheca of R.bilunata from Costa Rica.
The last time I had a Rochaina ooth (of R.peruana specifically) I failed to incubate it successfully. However, not only do I suspect that that ooth was damaged by cold weather in transit to me, but I also think that I was not keeping the air humidity high enough in it's setup, and perhaps kept it too hot as well. I was heating everything with heat cables back then, now I have a space heater and my entire room is kept at a warm ambient temperature. Additionally I have placed this ooth in a setup that I mist daily, so the air humidity is sure to stay high (aiming for 80% RH in it's container).
I have the oothecae in a 16 Oz deli cup with a fabric mesh lid. There is about an inch of coco fiber substrate, kept moist, topped with a few bark pieces. The ooth has been placed on top of one of those bark pieces. This container is inside the center of my current Hemithyrsocera vittata enclosure, which is well ventilated and misted daily. So the air humidity is consistently very high inside the deli cup, however it should still have adequate airflow, and the bark inside is dry to the touch, which is important for oothecae of this genus (they want stupid high air humidity but low surface moisture). The whole setup is kept at around 80-85F°.
Here is a photo of the ooth:
Really hoping to successfully incubate the ootheca, and then comes the real struggle; rearing the nymphs to adulthood. I know a couple of people who've successfully hatched Rochaina oothecae, but no one who's then succeeded in rearing those nymphs up to adulthood... so that is going to be the true trial and error period, here's hoping I can work some magic!
Now for yet another misidentified invert in my collection... this time completely my own doing. Turns out my "Euborellia annulipes" from St. George West, UT, are in fact E.cincticollis.
See, in my initial research, I could only find sightings of E.annulipes from Utah, so I just assumed these were that species. However, lately I've been noticing some things look off. The leg banding on this locality isn't very prominent, and the antennomere count was a bit too long to be annulipes.
Additionally, I noted that when I first got them, I had some winged individuals in my first generation. But all subsequent generations were completely wingless. According to bugguide, there are reports of winged annulipes in old literature, but it's thought that those were simply erroneously ID'd cincticollis or rare aberrations.
Well, after several generations of completely wingless individuals in their main colony, my "satellite" colony of this locality (escaped individuals that bred in my Archimandrita enclosure) started throwing out winged individuals. That setup gets drier than their dedicated species enclosure, and my thought is that drier conditions lead to winged adults being produced for dispersal purposes. 🤔 So the lack/presence of wings is more of an environmental factor than anything.
So the presence of winged adults under drier conditions, the weak leg banding, and high antennomere count leads me to believe this stock is actually Euborellia cincticollis, not Euborellia annulipes.
Here are some photos of a winged adult:
It's unfortunate that it took me this long to identify them properly, as I've already sold quite a few groups as "annulipes"... but I've updated the description on my for sale page to clear this up. So hopefully anyone who's bought from me that bothers to look over my FS list again will see the updated ID. I have since acquired true E.annulipes from another locality, but I'll show those off in a future post...
Now to introduce a new species for the hobby, Euborellia moesta from Trastevere, Rome, Italy. This is a medium sized, robust species, with jet black adult coloration. Males have heavily curved forceps, while those of females are straight. They aren't overly aggressive or cannibalistic, and seem to be quite easy to breed.
I have mine in a minimally ventilated enclosure with a few inches of coco fiber substrate, kept moist and at around 75-80F°. I'm feeding them dog food as the staple diet. There are also Nocticola and Compsodes in their setup but they don't seem to be eating them.
Here are some photos of an adult pair:
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| Female |
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| Male |
Love these cuties, and am so glad I've been able to establish them in culture! 😁
Lastly, someone sent me a young Phyrnichus orientalis as a random freebie in a trade, I believe unrelated to most of the stock in the US trade currently. So that's neat, and so far it has done very well and molted once in my care.
I have it in a minimally ventilated enclosure with a thin layer of coco fiber and coco coir chunks as the substrate, kept moist. It has a couple pieces of vertically slanted bark for hides. I'm keeping it at around 80-85F°, and I'm feeding it various roaches as it's staple diet.
Here are a few pictures of it:
A neat species for sure, hopefully I can successfully rear it to maturity and get a mate for it in the future. From what I hear they are rather slow growers, so it will likely be a while until then.
Anyways, that does it for this post, thanks for reading, I hope everyone enjoyed, and I'll see you all next time! 😄
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