Less Than Happy Updates...

It's about that time again, time to tally up the losses in the collection over the last month or so. 😔

First off, my Myrmecoblatta wheeleri female finally kicked the bucket, I think... Noticed she was absent from the Macropanesthia enclosure on 6/17, so all in all she lived almost 8 months as an adult, impressive for such a small roach species, especially that I wasn't keeping optimally... Hope to try again with that species one day, but for now it's clear my attempt to breed Myrmecoblatta wheeleri has been a complete disaster.

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Secondly, I unfortunately am down to a single female Ceronopus concolor, and a single, probably male Trogloderus sp.... 

The C.concolor just kept dying over the winter, I don't think they are particularly long lived, either that or I just kept them horribly, though I don't know what I did wrong if so. 

Whereas for the Trogloderus, I'm pretty sure I accidentally murdered them... We had a bit of a heat wave recently, and I didn't expect my dryer enclosures to dry out completely as fast as they did during said heat wave, the lack of moisture and high heat seemed to kill 3 of my 4 Trogloderus, and one of my CB Cryptoglossa muricata adults too... Sad about the latter, but the biggest hit for me was the Trogloderus, as even though I had not been successful in getting any offspring from them thus far, my hopes of breeding them were completely dashed with that blunder of mine. 

Pretty bummed that I made such a bad error, but stuff like this happens sometimes I guess, I'm certainly being more careful not to let any of my other enclosures completely dry out like that again.

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My Hyporhicnoda sp. "reflexa" females have all passed away, sadly no offspring from any of them. In fact, absolutely none of them had ooths in them upon dying, and I never saw them abort ooths either, so I half wonder if they are semelparous and only produce one internal ootheca before dying. If so, they might have aborted their ooths long before I got them, and so I never had a chance at breeding them... It's the best theory I can come up with ATM, definitely a bummer for sure though.

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My last Hemithyrsocera vittata nymph matured a month or so ago, and it was a male... So I decided to try and put him to use, and put a subadult female H.palliata in with him, to see if these two species can hybridize, and what the babies would look like if so. I personally really doubt they can hybridize on account of how different the hatchlings (and even larger nymphs) of the two species are in terms of morphology, but why not put it to the test? 🙃

Well, a few days ago I found the male dead, partially eaten, and the H.palliata female was now mature. I'm hoping the male lasted long enough to at least possibly mate with the female, maybe he tried and afterwards kicked the bucket after using up that energy? Or perhaps the adults of these two species don't get along and will kill each other if housed together, (which might make sense considering their overlapping natural ranges, which is yet another reason I doubt they can actually hybridize). Basically, due to my uncertainty here, I won't be able to disprove that the two can hybridize, but I may be able to prove they can, if I find babies in the enclosure after a month or so... 

I'll keep you all updated on the little project, but I highly suspect the female will pass away and no babies will ever be created. If I DO get hybrid babies though, rest assured I won't be selling them and will use this info to prevent such hybrids being created by other people who just want to house these two species together for fun.

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Lastly, I have failed yet again at breeding Deropeltis... my sp. "Masai Mara" ooths all ended up being rotted inside, and I really don't know why. 😭 I kept them warm, kept them semi-humid (gave the adults a moisture gradient), and well ventilated, still I failed. Don't think these are getting established in the US, not from this batch at least, which really sucks. I pretty much give up on this genus, I evidently can't breed Deropeltis to save my life, which is a shame considering they are some of my all time favorite Blattids. 😔

Anyways, that's gonna do it for this bummer post, hope you found it informative at least, thanks for reading, stay safe, and I'll see you all next time.

The Good, The Terrible, & The Ugly

Let's start with the good. The good news is, two of my four Ancaudellia hamifera nymphs have matured, and it happens to be a male and a female! 😁 The one older adult female I have in this starter group of five still hasn't given birth, nor has she gotten very plump, I don't think she's gravid at all. Hopefully this freshly matured female will mate and produce young for me, along with the other female yet to mature.

I'm surprised by just how long their wings are (especially on the male), the tegmina extend well past their abdomens! Makes them look pretty cool, as interesting as the wing tearing behavior in Panesthiinae is, I do kinda wish they'd keep their wings, they're so sleek and pretty looking. 😍

Here are some pictures of the newly mature pair:

Adult male

Adult female

Had to get a couple butt shots to show off that beautiful gold fuzz on their last couple abdominal segments, such a weird feature for this species to have! 😄 Interestingly, the bases of their legs also seem to be hairy, which you can see in a couple of these photos. 

Anyways, now I've got fresh adult pictures of all my Panesthiinae, time to wait for babies from all of them! 🤞😅 This will probably be the last Panesthiinae post in a long while... 

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On to the terrible, terrible news... The other day I found two of my adult female Hemithyrsocera vittata dead. 😭 And upon further examination, the "third female" was actually another male... 😣 Both males are still alive, as is the tiny stunted nymph, so I'm not sure what happened, those females should not have died that prematurely... 

My only two theories as to why both the females died, but none of the others did are:

1. They didn't have enough ventilation, which some Ectobiids can't handle, and the reason the females were particularly affected was because they were producing ooths, which puts more strain on them and would cause them to succumb to substandard conditions faster than other life stages (and a lack of ventilation is truly the only thing I can think of that was substandard in their enclosure). But, my H.palliata have even less ventilation than they do, and they're absolutely thriving, (though that species is generally more hardy anyways).
2. The perfectly even sex ratio actually stressed the females out, due to males constantly trying to mate with them. I've seen this in other invertebrates before, but I can't recall this being a problem with any of the roaches I've worked with previously.

Either way, all hope is not lost. I found four oothecae in the substrate of their enclosure, and there may well be more buried in there. However, it's likely at least half of those ooths were laid by the females before the males matured... 😐 The females only had two weeks with the males before they died, and who knows how much of that time they were actually healthy enough to create viable ooths... But hopefully each female got to lay at least one viable ootheca each, I'd really only need one ooth to keep the culture going. 

This is all so frustrating, because I had hoped to really kick things off and get this species well established in US culture ASAP... Yet here I am barely keeping my culture together, hoping for one or two of my oothecae to be viable. 😩 Guess there's a reason they've not been well established in the US hobby before, they are completely unforgiving when it comes to improper or simply substandard husbandry... 🙃

Oh well, fingers crossed one of those ooths is fertile, and I have better luck next generation, I'll definitely keep them better ventilated from here on out.

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Also, terrible, but slightly less terrible than the vittata, only because it wasn't unexpected, but the last of my Hyporhicnoda sp. "reflexa - Venezuela" has just died, and I got no offspring from them at all. 😟 All three of those females were old, and in pretty rough shape on arrival, and sadly I don't think any of them were even carrying ooths. So sadly, that species is not longer in culture in the US, I don't think there was much to be done for those last three individuals other than to keep them comfortable as they lived out their lives.

As for my three Hyporhicnoda sp. "reflexa" females, they're all looking healthy still, but I'm thinking none of them are gravid either, and may be too old to breed as well... So those may go the same way as my sp. "reflexa - Venezuela", though unlike that species, I hear these standard sp. "reflexa" may be getting imported into the US again this year, so hopefully they'll be established in the US hobby at some point. 

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And now we get to the ugly... Two more of my Gromphadorhina sp. "Unidentified" males matured recently, one is another average sized male, decent markings, good pronotum structure, but the other one was the largest male in the culture, and looked like he'd have impressive pronotum structure as well... Unfortunately though, not only did he molt in a tight spot between two bark slabs, which caused half of his pronotum to be pressed against bark and not expand properly, giving it a squished appearance, but he was also viciously cannibalized upon for whatever reason. 😟

So, that sucks, however I'm very adamant about documenting all the pronotum structures and coloration of every adult that pops up in this colony. Unfortunately I can't accurately document the final coloration of this dead male since he died teneral, and thus will never darken completely... However, I can still show off his pronotum structure, so here are some pictures of his corpse:

Gross, but while his pronotum is deformed you can still see it's not got an anterior notch or anything (a pronotum notch would indicate Princisia hybridization), and looks like a G.portentosa pronotum, as it should. 

Now, here's that smaller male that matured, strangely he's got a decent amount of grain mites attached to him, he's literally the only one in the culture who's got that problem though... 

Decent abdominal coloration, you can see he's got the pale orange abdominal margins, a bit fainter than on the other males though. Ironically he's got the brightest, biggest thoracic pad spots of any of my males thus far.

Well, that's gonna do it for this update post, now that I've brought y'all up to speed on the important updates in my collection, time to focus on new projects for this year, and I've got a few in the works... 😉

Thanks for reading everyone, hope you enjoyed, stay safe, and I'll see you all next time!

Hello Hyporhicnoda!!!

Magnificent Beasts Package Series Pt. 2/6

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There are some roaches that stay in US culture for a while, maybe a few years or so, but still remain very scarce and often die out. The Blaberid genus Hyporhicnoda has been one such type of roach, there was one species, Hyporhicnoda litomorpha "Panama", that was around for a couple years, they were sent to a few different US Blatticulturists, but those are sadly on the brink of hobby extinction. 😞

There are two other Hyporhicnoda strains being bred sporadically by European hobbyists, Hyporhicnoda sp. "reflexa" and Hyporhicnoda sp. "reflexa - Venezuela", both are very similar to each other, and have yet to be formerly identified beyond genus, (they're certainly not actual H.reflexa, as I've mentioned in a previous post). Brandon Maines has actually been working with these two strains for a year or so now, but unfortunately they've not been doing so hot for him, they are known to be rather finicky for whatever reason. He only had a few females of both strains left, and due to their steady decline and his overall lack of interest in working with them any further, he decided to send them to me to see if they'd do any better in my care. I don't know that they will, but I'll give it my all and see what happens! 🤞 Thankfully he says all the adult females should have been exposed to males and thus mated at one point, so it's just a matter of getting them to give birth now! 

These two Hyporhicnoda strains are very slow growing, slow breeding roaches, and they can be tricky to breed long term, with colonies often seeming to do well at first, before slowly petering out. Adult males are fully winged, with females being wingless. Hopefully I can get mine established, and get them into the hands of more US Blatticulturists!

I've got three (or four, I already forget) adult females of the Hyporhicnoda sp. "reflexa" strain, and two adult females and one subadult female of the Hyporhicnoda sp. "reflexa - Venezuela" strain. One of the adult "Venezuela" females looks a bit worse for wear, so there's really only one healthy looking, hopefully gravid female of that species. The sp. "relfexa" with no locality info all look pretty good, one of the females has lost a tarsus, but that's it. 

I've got my two Hyporhicnoda species set up in moderately ventilated containers with a few inches of compressed, moist coconut fiber, with some rotten wood chunks and bark pieces buried as well, and leaf litter on top. These roaches burrow a lot, but according to Nicolas Rousseaux of the Cafarnarium, vertical bark hides are appreciated by adults, particularly adult females, which may climb up them and emit breeding pheromones when ready to mate. As such, I've offered them some vertically slanted bark hides for this purpose. I'm keeping them on a humidity gradient, half the enclosure humid, half dry, with temps around 75-80F°. I'll be feeding them chick feed, artificial pollen, and fruits, along with the rotten wood and leaf litter in their enclosure. 

Here are some pictures of the adult females, starting with the Hyporhicnoda sp. "reflexa" (no locality):

And now the Hyporhicnoda sp. "reflexa - Venezuela":

They're rather plain looking at first glance, but I think they have a very neat, primitive look about them. I'll keep you all updated on how they do, there's a good chance they'll just crash completely with how few are left, but I'll be keeping my fingers heavily crossed! 😅

Anyway, that's going to be it for this post, but never fear, more roachy content is on the way, we've only just scratched the surface of this package! 😁 Thanks for reading everyone, hope you enjoyed, stay safe, and I'll see you all next time! 😄