Pods, Crickets & Roach Updates!

Last year I started an Armadillidium vulagre colony from a single gravid female I found inside a Walmart in Meridian, Idaho. This particular line (perhaps due to inbreeding) has thrown out a lot of color variations, one consistent one has been "Dalmatian" looking individuals. I finally got around to isolating some a few months back, they have now bred and while it's still a little to early to say, it does seem like their offspring all inherited the trait. 

So should be a simple recessive gene, in which case, while I do hate gimicky morph names, I feel that I have to name these "Walmatian"... 🤣 Credit to Kyle from Roachcrossing calling them "Walbinos" as a joke, which inspired me. We'll see if they truly do prove out though.

Here are some pictures of them:

One of the larger males pictured here is a high expression individual, most of them have been low expression though, meaning they only have a few small flecks of pigment here and there. Mostly quite pale, which is normal among a lot of "Dalmatian" morph isopods.

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Speaking of Roachcrossing, Kyle recently sent me a new Gryllus species from "New Park, AL". They are neat in that larger nymphs have a reddish brown coloration, whereas most Gryllus have pretty dark black nymphs, except for firmus, I've noticed my colony of those is throwing out paler nymphs and adults (initially a customer pointed it out to me and thought they were a different species, but after isolating pale nymphs to their own setup and letting them breed, their offspring are a mix of normal black individuals and more pale ones, so it seems to be just one species with variable coloration).

Anyways, I've got the sp. "New Park" set up in a well ventilated 5 gallon gasket bin with an inch or so of coco fiber, topped with lots of eggcrates and bark hides (they're being cohabbed with pure Blaberus sp. "peruvianus"). I'm keeping a third of the enclosure moist, the rest dry, and am feeding them dog food and fruits.

Here are somw pictures of an adult female:

A really neat new addition to culture, their chirp is pretty and they are very easy to keep and breed. Mine have already produced oodles of nymphs!

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My Spherillo sp. "Dream" have been thriving, I recently replaced their old substrate and revamped their setup, and they've produced a bunch of mancae as of late as a result.

Managed to snag some pictures of a few of them:

Pictures really don't do these justice... though I will say these came out a lot better than the last pics I posted of this species. 😄

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Now for yet another hisser project... I am "Hisserdude" after all. 😆 I'm currently working on refining a more consistently and vibrantly striped line of Princisia vanwaerebeki "Big/Black - 2017 CCR Stock". My main B/B colony is quite variable, throwing out a mix of high striped, low striped, very dark and straight up melanistic adults (the latter I've already isolated a true breeding line of, "Obsidian"). However I really would like a line that consistently only throws out individuals with the orange/yellow abdominal margins. And not just the more squared off, thin margins, but ones where the orange margins turn into side-striping. As that coloration is my favorite in the "Big/Black" phenotype. 

So first, I had to isolate a culture that only produced individuals with abdominal margins and breeds true to that. I accomplished this in a generation, it was actually incredibly easy. Now I've isolated the individuals from that colony with the highest amount of side-striping, a 2.2 group of fresh adults, and have them in their own enclosure. With any luck, their high level of abdominal patterning will be heritable, and I can have a true breeding colony of very "Vibrant" B/B within another generation or two. 🤞 

Here are some pictures of the individuals I've picked for the highest amount of striping:

Females

Male

Pair

Pretty, right? Now here is a more normally patterned female for comparison, note how square/rectangular the abdominal margins are, barely cutting into the black at all:

Weirdly, males seem to much more commonly throw out a higher level of abdominal patterning than females, there were plenty of males that had the nice sidestriping in the colony I pulled these out of, but most females had just the normal, more squared off abdominal margins.

Anyways, here's hoping I'll have success with this line breeding project, fingers crossed! 🤞

Well, that does it for this post, thanks for reading, hope everyone enjoyed, and I'll see you all next time! 😉