Unfortunately, quite little is known about the breeding and larval development of this species, and so information on their rearing is scarce. The adults in question were found in a fairly humid (at least for TX), forested environment, found climbing the trunks of trees in the late afternoon. So this helps shed some light on the type of habitat they are found in, and so I set them up accordingly.
I initially set my adults up in a temporary, minimally ventilated enclosure with a base layer of flake soil substrate, topped with lots of vertically slanted hardwood bark pieces and and lichen covered sticks. I kept the substrate moist, but left the bark pretty dry, and in addition to the lichen, I offered dog food and apple slices. Temps were in the 75-85F° range.
Adults are lichen feeders in the wild, and in addition to offering lichen, I tried making a lichen substitute for them (see more in my video here). Unfortunately they don't seem to be eating the artificial diet much (though the springtails in their enclosure are going nuts over it), though it seems they must be feeding on the apple and/or dog food I'm offering them, as they ran out of actual lichen a while ago and still seem to be going strong.
To my delight, shortly after arrival, the adults oviposited readily on the vertical standing bark, laying eggs in between flakey layers of underbark and in crevices of more heavily textured/craggy bark (you can see footage I took of the eggs here). Their oviposition method closely mirrors that of Chalcolepidius spp. I've worked with, which I find interesting.
The eggs took maybe a week or so to develop, before hatching into absolutely tiny, pretty active larvae. There were several dozen of them climbing around, they seemed to spend little time on the substrate and instead preferred to climb around on the bark.
I isolated 30 or so of these L1 larvae to their own minimally ventilated deli cups (since Zopherid larvae are supposedly quite cannibalistic), each with a thin layer of flake soil substrate, topped in a small piece of bark. For some, I offered fish food pellets as a supplemental food option, others I did not. I kept all of them pretty humid, and at around 75-80F°.
Unfortunately, all larvae died within a week or two of isolation, and pretty much all died around the same time. I am unsure if conditions were too moist, not moist enough, if the substrate/hide choices were not to their liking (perhaps a more bark oriented setup would have been preferable), or if they have more specific dietary needs than just rotten wood and/or a protein source... Unfortunately due to their extremely small size making them difficult to monitor, and the way in which they all died around the same time, I was unable to get a good idea of what exactly went wrong.
The adults, which are still alive and well, were moved to a larger, though slightly shorter enclosure, set up much the same as the previous setup, though the bark hides do not stand as straight vertically as they did in the smaller setup. They have unfortunately stopped breeding, and no more eggs have been produced since that first wave.
It's possible this could be due to running out of actual lichen in their diet, which could be necessary for triggering oviposition. It could be that they need more verticality to their setup to trigger oviposition, and that the new, shorter setup is inadequate.
But the most likely reason, I am starting to suspect, is that they are seasonal breeders, which means they are probably not going to breed again until next Spring/Summer (and may require a mild cooling period in the winter to trigger them to breed next year). This sucks, but at least the adults are rather long lived, so hopefully I'll get another chance at breeding them next year. 🤞
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| Adults |
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| L1 larva |
Unfortunate that I was unable to get further than this, but at least the preferred medium and hide orientation for oviposition has been confirmed and recorded, and it seems specific fungi or wood types are not needed for that particular stage. Seasonal cues may be required for reproduction, though that has yet to be confirmed. Adults will seemingly accept a variety of food for survival, though it's uncertain whether lichen is needed to trigger reproduction.
As far as larval care goes, we still need some major breakthroughs, and we can not rule out the necessity of specific fungi mycelium or substrate/surface area types for the successful rearing of larvae.
I'll keep trying with these beauties, and will update y'all with any discoveries or breakthroughs I may make, for now though I just wanted to thoroughly document and present my experience with them thus far.
Anyways, that's gonna do it for this post, thanks for reading, hope everyone enjoyed, and I'll see you all next time! 😉
