Ammopelmatus pictus Breeding Project: Failure

Well, I am quite sad to say that I seem to have failed yet again in breeding Ammopelmatus. 😞 Unfortunately, a mere couple of weeks after removing the eggs from my female A.pictus' guts, the majority of them rotted away. I believe I was keeping them far too humid, the substrate they were buried in got just about soaking wet a couple times, and it seems that Ammopelmatus eggs both hate excess moisture, AND a lack of airflow, burying them in substrate directly wasn't working.

I proceeded to uncover the remaining couple dozen eggs and placed them on top of the substrate, however the remaining eggs kept dying off one by one, and every time one died I'd panic and try to change something up, one week I would be keeping them room temperature, the next week more like 80F, one week they'd be humid and the next week almost bone dry, etc., and I think THAT was a huge mistake as well. 😓

I have a pathetic 4 eggs left that still look OK, I moved them off of the coconut fiber I had them on initially and put them on sand, which I am keeping pretty dry but misting very lightly almost daily. They are being kept at room temps and while they don't seem to be developing much, at least they aren't dying either. 🤷

Here are some pics of the eggs, back when I had more of them:

I think, based on all that I've seen thus far, that female Ammopelmatus probably DO lay their eggs all at once, in a brooding chamber as was stated in older literature, and that laying eggs singly in loose substrate is an artifact of captivity and improper husbandry. They are likely laid in an inorganic substrate like clay, sand or a mix of the two, so excess moisture isn't held, but they must be buried deep enough in the ground not to desiccate either, (trust me, being kept bone dry kills the eggs). And the temperature probably stays around room temp that far underground too, even in the summer.

So, in captivity a good idea IMO would be to use a clay/sand mix for at least the lower couple of inches of substrate in an enclosure for gravid adult females, so that they can make a proper brooding chamber and lay their eggs all at once, (which may prevent them from getting eggbound too, even if fed when gravid). Keeping the enclosure semi-humid is probably advised at least while the female is in there, but once the eggs are laid I think most ventilation should be cut off and the cage not watered much at all for a couple months, the substrate should hopefully retain enough humidity for the eggs to survive but not so much that they start rotting either. This will be vastly easier to do in a clay based substrate than a coconut fiber based one IMO. That'll be my methodology in the future when I try breeding Ammopelmatus again, and believe me, I'm gonna keep trying, with as many species as I can, until I can crack the code to breeding these critters! (or until I get too frustrated to continue).

So yeah, pretty sure I've failed with A.pictus, I'll let you all know if those last few eggs pull through, but I think I messed up too bad with incubating them properly early on. 😢 But hopefully I can figure out the secret to breeding this genus, and then try again with the beautiful pictus one day! Anyways, hope this post proved useful, thanks for reading, stay safe, and I'll see you next time! 😉

Dark Tigers & Some Misc Updates

My Princisia vanwaerebeki "Tiger" nymphs have been growing well, the two female nymphs may or may not be mature already (hard for me to tell when female hissers are actually mature sometimes), but the male has matured for sure now, and he's a bit on the small side. However, his coloration is quite unusual for pure males, yet his pronotum has the typical shallow notch on the anterior margin that is typical of this phenotype, so I still think this stock is pure.

His mesonotum and metanotum are fringed with red coloration at their posterior margins, and the black stripes on the abdomen are very thick, unusual for this species. He doesn't fit my Pure Hobby Hisser "Key" description of pure stock at all, this phenotype is more variable than I thought, and I'll have to adjust the key as such. If it weren't for the perfectly consistent pronotum structure of this strain, I'd think they were hybrids. 

Here are some pictures of this weirdo:

The dark male compared to my large, more normal looking male.

Weird right? So dark for this species, yet still seems to be pure going off of pronotum structure. And yes, my large male still has a genital prolapse, as you can see in those last two pics, the issue refuses to correct itself.
In any case, this has me wondering if I can create a super dark, if not completely black strain of this species overtime, if I keep on selecting for darker and darker individuals... Might have to do that, since I still can't find a single "Black Tiger" strain that is actually pure.

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In more somber news, the last of my Hemithyrsocera vittata males died on the 10th of May. They actually lived longer than I thought they would, and the stunted nymph (who also looks male) looks like a subadult now. Still kicking myself about losing my females, but I guess hindsight is 20/20...

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So, you know how I had said that my last female Myrmecoblatta wheeleri had died in the last update I wrote about this species? Well I dumped her and her sub into my Macropanesthia rhinoceros enclosure (both of which have molted to L6 now BTW), and much to my surprise she had sprung back to life the next day, and continues to live on in my rhino roach bin. It's one of the bins I have that still has mold pop up occasionally, even though there is lots of microfauna in there, so that's probably why she's still kicking. Doubt she'll reproduce, but thought I'd update y'all, at the very least so I can fully document the longevity of adults of this obscure species.

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Oddly enough, my last female Ammopelmatus pictus, the one I thought was a subadult in the last post I made about her? Well, on the 10th of May, I found that she had molted, into what I assume is ACTUALLY her subadult stage... 😂 She's actually as big as my largest adult female was, so she's gonna be the biggest adult female of this species I've ever seen, such a shame I don't have a male for her...

Here are some pics of her in her new skin:

Looking forward to seeing her as an adult. So far the breeding project is not going near as well as I'd hoped, ran into some hurdles incubating the eggs, which I'll wait to elaborate on in a future post. Just wanted to show off this female for now, before she actually matures.

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Lastly, my Perisphaerus pygmaeus culture is just booming, after doing a headcount, I can confirm that I went from 10 individuals in November of last year to 90+ individuals, which just goes to show how fast this species can breed if given adequate ventilation, heat and humidity. 😁

Here are some pictures I took while doing a cleanup of my culture, which was necessary considering how much frass and sheds had accumulated in their enclosure, (and that's when I got the headcount):

So glad these are doing well for me, man I love Perisphaerinae!!! 😄

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

Further Ammopelmatus Frustrations...

Man, I know Ammopelmatus haven't really been bred with much success in the past, but not having any knowledge of proper post breeding husbandry for females can really make a keeper wanna pull their hair out... I'm sad to report that my second mated A.pictus female also died prematurely, I assume due to being eggbound, so once again I had to cut the eggs she didn't lay out of her abdomen once she had passed. 😑

This time, the female at least laid 5 eggs herself before dying, which is a higher amount than the other female laid, (formerly I thought the previous, smaller female only laid 1 egg before dying, but I found a second egg in her old substrate recently, so that brings her total of laid eggs to 2). I'm quite disappointed that I couldn't get this larger female to lay eggs normally either, but at least the eggs still within her seem just as developed as the ones she laid, so I am again optimal that they'll all hatch. I got a total of 37 viable looking eggs from this female (surprisingly, there were more empty dud looking eggs inside this female than in my smaller female).

So, if this second female truly died from being eggbound like the last female did (which seems to be the case at first glance), then it would seem that after a successful mating, female Ammopelmatus should be fed VERY infrequently, if fed anything at all. Maybe one big meal right after mating, and that's it... 🤔

Either that, OR A.pictus have different care requirements than the SoCal Ammopelmatus I'm used to keeping, and are actually just a finicky species with very particular substrate and/or humidity requirements for oviposition... 🤷 Hard to tell, considering there is no real baseline for difficulty levels between different Ammopelmatus species, and this is only my second attempt at breeding this genus... That's another reason why I'd really like to get my hands on some more species soon, the more experience I get with a wide variety of Ammopelmatus species, the better chance I'll have at cracking the code to creating a repeatable breeding methodology. 

Also, unfortunately both my adult males have passed away now, I honestly assume due to old age, Ammopelmatus males don't live terribly long as adults and these were WC as adults, so who knows how old they were. It's possible shipping them as adults may also have contributed to a shorter lifespan, I don't like shipping adults of most inverts for that reason, but in this case it was necessary to get them into culture. Sadly, this means my subadult female will go unmated, which is unfortunate, but I'll at least get a better idea of how long this species typically lives as adults, since I'll have reared her to adulthood myself and can fully document her adult lifespan. 

Here are some pictures of my subadult female, never showed her off after she molted to a subadult in my care:

As you can see she's got some grain mites attached to her legs and around her eyes, a little unsightly, but nothing serious, I've inoculated her enclosure with predatory mites which will hopefully eliminate the problem. 

In any case, my main hope is that all these eggs will hatch, in total I have 78 viable looking eggs, so if I can hatch the majority out, this will still be a huge win for the fledgling Jerusalem cricket hobby! 🤞😅 I'll have plenty of individuals to test different methodologies on myself, and may be able to send some off to other interested parties as well. I honestly suspect getting the eggs to hatch will be the easy part, the only hurdles I see going forward will be rearing the hatchlings, (something no one seems to have done before on account of a lack of captive hatches, so IDK how difficult it will be), and breeding the adults again in the future; hopefully I can figure out how to prevent the females getting eggbound and/or how to induce proper oviposition. I almost wonder if female Ammopelmatus truly ARE supposed to oviposit all their eggs at once in a little chamber like the old (but mostly outdated) literature says, because all the viable eggs inside these females were at the same stage of development, which I feel is unusual for eggs laid only once a day or so... 🤔 But everyone who's kept them in captivity and has gotten eggs from their females always reports them laying eggs singly throughout the substrate, so IDK.

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

Ammopelmatus pictus EGGS!!!

Well, good news and bad news here... Good news, you read that title right, the smaller of my two female Ammopelmatus pictus laid an egg! 🙂 Bad news, after laying one egg she got eggbound and died, so I had to cut her open and extract the rest of the eggs by hand. 🙃 Evidently, unlike other Orthopterans I've kept but much like mantids, overfeeding gravid adult females can cause Ammopelmatus to become eggbound, which means they gain too much weight and can't extrude eggs anymore, which then kills them, (basically it's extreme constipation, but with eggs). The fact that this female was small didn't help things, hopefully my other, larger adult female doesn't get eggbound, I'll certainly be feeding her a lot less.

Thankfully I had been keeping a watchful eye on the small female after found the first egg, and noticed her dying the day afterwards... She died from being eggbound very quickly, and as soon as I saw she was definitely dead, I sprung into action, cut her open and extracted the eggs, all of which seemed to be fully developed thankfully. I then gently rinsed the eggs of any residual guts/hemolymph, and buried them in moist coconut fiber in moderately ventilated deli cups, along with the other egg. All in all I got 40 healthy looking eggs from this female, which I'll be keeping humid and at around 74F°.

Interestingly, not only were these eggs kinda huge in comparison to the female, but they're all yellow. Last time I tried breeding Ammopelmatus, the eggs my females produced were smaller, white, and likely infertile since they never hatched. However, I was looking into the species Sia ferox on Instagram (a close relative of Ammopelmatus, also in the subfamily Stenopelmatinae), and turns out some people overseas have bred S.ferox successfully. Interestingly, their fertile eggs are quite yellow, a color I usually associate with infertile Orthopteran eggs for some reason, but it seems that yellow coloration might actually be normal for fertile Stenopelmatinae eggs. So it would seem that this female had definitely been fertilized, and that I'm getting healthy Ammopelmatus eggs this go around, albeit, ones that I had to surgically remove from their mother after death... (coincidentally, one person had their Sia female get eggbound too, and cut the eggs out of her, which is where I got the idea to do it for this female).

Here are some pictures of the first egg, the one that was actually laid, the rest of them look identical to this one:

Weirdly, the eggs have a texture to them similar to that of a compound insect eye, and they're also surprisingly hard and sturdy to the touch, not squishy.

Perhaps worth noting is that the females were having some grain mite issues in their enclosures, so I replaced their substrate with freshly made coconut fiber, and literally the day after that substrate change is when I found this egg. 🤔 Hopefully my other female doesn't become eggbound and actually starts laying eggs normally here soon, and fingers crossed all these eggs prove easy to hatch! 🤞

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

Ammopelmatus pictus New Males & Pairings!

The two adult Ammopelmatus pictus males Brendan Lan collected for me from San Joaquin County, CA, about a week ago, (the 19th to be exact). Both were alive on arrival thankfully, male #1 with full length antennae, quite active, and in perfect condition. The other male looked a little worse for wear though, not only were his antennae cut a bit short, (which isn't too uncommon on WC inverts), but he was also missing his left mating hook, and acting quite weak. I actually thought male #2 might have had a horsehair worm at first, but it seems he was just dehydrated and/or hungry, as after a couple days in my care he perked right up.

I've got them set up in small, moderately ventilated containers with a couple inches of moist coconut fiber for substrate, and am feeding them chick feed and live/pre-killed invertebrate prey. 

Here are some pictures of the new additions:

Adult male #1

Both mating hooks intact

Adult male #2

Note the left mating hook is missing

Pretty right? 😍 It's important to note though, that these males are both at least a little longer than the largest of my two adult females, which was a bit concerning considering that this genus actually has a small male mating advantage.

Now, for some bad news... I made a dumb mistake in housing my small male nymph that I received in my original group, and just housed him in a deli cup one of the females was shipped in, that had four big holes drilled in the top. Rather than fill in the big holes and drill in tiny ones like I SHOULD have, I just lazily left it as it was, as I knew the male was still too big to get out of the holes... But stupid me forgot Jerusalem crickets can chew through plastic, so one day I checked on him and found this:

Little bugger chewed through the plastic and made one of the holes bigger, then escaped... It's been several days now, and I've not found him anywhere in my hotel room, I'm sad to say he's gone for good, all thanks to my incredibly stupid mistake. 😣 Now my plan is to heat up my lone female nymph and try to get her to mature ASAP, and then just mate her with one of these adult males I got.

Anyways, back to more happy news... After ensuring the males were well fed and recovered from their shipping trip, I paired them up with my two adult females, and actually livestreamed the process on Instagram. Both pairings actually went smoothly, despite the size differences and male #2 missing one of his mating hooks. I made sure to leave the females in the mating enclosures overnight, and thus they should have absorbed all the sperm in their spermatophores, instead of rubbing the whole spermatophore off right after mating like what I think happened to my Ammopelmatus sp. "Long Beach" in the past, when I moved them straight back to their normal enclosures with deeper substrate right after mating.

However, the matings were not without their anomalies. Let's start with pairing #1, which was between my largest, darkest female and male #1. The mating went smoothly, however a couple hours after mating I saw that the female had begun consuming her spermatophore... Something that's not normal for virgin females to do. I think this female was probably already mated, hence being so quick to consume the spermatophore, she didn't need it. After conferring with David Weissman, he also thinks this is the case, and also reassured me that all sperm in the spermatophore is likely absorbed by the female a couple hours after mating, so even if she hadn't been mated prior, she should be fully fertilized now, as she'd barely made a dent in the spermatophore a couple hours after mating, and it took 24 hours for her to consume the entire thing. 

Female from paring #1, consuming spermatophore a couple hours after mating

Same female 24 hours later, almost done consuming spermatophore

Spermatophore all gone.

Pairing #2 was between my smaller female and male #2 (the weak one with a single mating hook). As expected, this pairing took a bit longer, but did actually end in a successful spermatophore transfer. This female made no attempt to feed on her spermatophore whatsoever, which leads me to believe she had not been mated prior. However, 24 hours later, I checked on her, and the right half of her spermatophore had fallen off! Spermatophores supposedly should stay on for 3-4 days after mating according to one of Weissman's papers on JC mating. However, after talking with him, he again reassured me that this female had likely absorbed all the sperm left in the spermatophore before that half fell off, and apparently the part that did fall off wasn't even the part where the sperm was stored... So the female should still be fertilized. 

Pairing #2, beginning of courtship

Successful spermatophore transfer

Female a couple hours after mating, note intact spermatophore

Same female 24 hours later, only half of spermatophore still present

Remaining half shrunken and mostly absorbed

Found the detached half next to the female

All in all, seems like a success to me after chatting with David Weissman, if there was any doubt about these WC adult females being fertilized before, there should be none now! 😄 So now I just gotta hope they lay some good, fertile eggs, fingers crossed! I'll be sure to keep you all updated on how they do! 

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