First off, my Vonones ornata "Ocala, FL" are doing fantastic, and all five babies from the first wave of offspring are growing well and look more like mini adults now. 😁 In addition to this, the second wave of offspring has started hatching out, and I've found at least 11 new babies in the adults' setup (which is now a gallon container). So happy this species is breeding well for me, can't wait until I have a nice big colony established! 😄
In other great news, my one Margattea sp. "Macao" female matured a month or so ago, has been and still is laying ooths, and I've already got my first set of hatchlings! 😁 I'm well on my way to finally establishing a good colony of this species, and should hopefully get them established in the US hobby soon!
Now for some quite unfortunate news... My male Pseudacanthops lobipes died, without successfully mating with my female... 😭 For some reason, he started getting really weak, at first I thought he was dehydrated or hungry, but after misting him and watching him drink, and feeding him, he showed no signs of improvement. When he did die, it almost looked like he had a prolapse or something.
Not sure what did him in, one theory I had was potential pesticide poisoning, from walking on the walls of my bug closet one time when he flew away from the female. I thought maybe the owners of this house previously sprayed insecticides inside, but I've had some roaches get out of their enclosures and crawl on the floor and walls too, and upon being captured and put back in their setups, none of them showed signs of poisoning... 🤔
It should be noted that he also had plenty of ventilation, so lack of airflow wasn't the issue here, like it was for my first adult female.
However, while this is very sad news, there is a sliver of hope for me here. The females of this species can supposedly produce at least one or two viable ooths via emergency parthenogenesis before they die. The amount of offspring per ooth would be minimal compared to fertilized ooths, and the offspring will of course all be female clones of the mother.
Additionally, since it's emergency parthenogenesis in a species that normally breeds via sexual reproduction, said parthenogenesis will likely only last a generation. Meaning that if the offspring produced via parthenogenesis mature and aren't mated, they won't be able to reproduce via parthenogenesis themselves, they'll absolutely need males to mate with. But, I'd at least have another generation of females to work with, and hope I can find plenty of males for them in the future. Either that or push my luck and hope I can beat the odds and create a stable, multigenerational parthenogenetic strain (as has inadvertently been done in certain roaches like Polyphaga saussurei and P.obscura).
Back to happy news, just last week, I finally found babies in my Balta vilis setup! 😁 They're breeding much better for me than they have in the past, looking forward to hopefully spreading them around in the hobby here in the US soon!
In other Ectobiid related news, found hatchlings in my Euthlastoblatta diaphana enclosure a month ago, and man are these things prolific! 😅 I've already put them up on my For Sale page, and am hoping they'll catch on, as they are quite pretty Ectobiids and a good gateway species into the more finicky ones IMO.
Lastly, some nice springtail news, found babies in my Isotoma viridis cup a couple weeks ago, and they've been growing very fast! They're such adorable little springtails, glad they're breeding well for me! 😁
Well, that does it for this post, next post we'll wrap up the Nicoluc Shipment series, and after that I've got more updates and exciting new additions to show off, so stay tuned! 😄 Thanks for reading, hope everyone enjoyed, stay safe, and I'll see you all next time! 😉
