In any case, I finally managed to get pictures of a somewhat freshly matured adult male, so here he is:
As you can see, young males look much prettier than males a few weeks old... 😅
Finally, I'm getting adults in my Epilamprinae sp. "Kota Kinabalu" colony! 😁 They grew quite slowly initially, but really seemed to speed up in their later instars. They have a similar color palate to Rhabdoblatta rustica, with males typically being quite reddish-orange, and females being a more olive brown (though the odd female can apparently come out more orange in color).
Here are some pictures of them:
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| Adult female |
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| Adult male |
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| Adult male, close up of ventral tarsi |
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| Adult male, close up of last ventral abdominal segments |
As you see, I took some unusual close up shots. Because we now have locality data, there is some hope for getting at least a genus ID for these. So I took pics of the last few abdominal segments, knowing the shape of the subgenital plate on males can be an important identifying feature of Epilamprinae spp., and the pics of the tarsi were at the request of a taxonomist knowledgeable in Asian Epilamprinae. I'm currently awaiting his response, if he can provide an identification, even just a genus ID, I'll likely make another post announcing that information soon. 😉
I also got adults popping up in my Gromphadorhina portentosa "LLE Mahogany" culture! Now... I did not get the chance to up-house them, though I have added a good deal more hides. However as a result of all ~20 of them being reared in a 2 gallon tub, they're maturing at a very miniature size, (which is apparently my specialty when it comes to hissers, raising runts... 😂). Oh well, they're healthy and should still breed, and aren't overcrowded, so I don't really care that they're small, I'll rehouse them next generation for sure! 😅
Now, here are some pictures of this beautiful morph:
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| Adult female |
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| Adult male |
Here's hoping they'll breed well for me! 😊
Lastly, a bittersweet update, got another brood from my Gromphadorhina sp. "Unidentified", and it's the largest one yet, around 20 nymphs or so! That's nice and all, however the female that gave birth died shortly after doing so, having suffered seemingly from a prolapse.
They were unfortunately another species I'd offered some cardboard packing material as hides, however said cardboard was later found to be laced with fire retardant chemicals, which actually poisoned several of my roaches... So I've been having odd reproduction issues and die offs in said cultures, and even though I've since removed the hides, the individuals who ingested some of that cardboard still seem to have been negatively affected.
However, thankfully the issues do not seem to carry onto the offspring produced by these individuals, so my next generation of this species should breed just fine. Plus, I still have several gravid Gromphadorhina sp. "Unidentified" females remaining who look fairly healthy, so maybe they'll give birth to broods and actually survive as well. 😅 In any case, not too worried about losing the culture.
Well, that's gonna do it for this post, thanks for reading, hope you all enjoyed, stay safe, and I'll see you all next time! 😉
