However, there is still technically a small chance this wild collected ooth, found on a twig of low growing foliage, could have been laid by something else entirely. Either a different Rochaina species like R.peruana, or even something closely related like Eushelfordia pica (also recorded from the same area in Peru) or another similar Nyctiboridae. I'll have a better idea once that captive laid ooth from the for sure R.metae female hatches, if the offspring look identical to these then it's safe to say they're both R.metae.
I kept this ooth in a 16 oz deli cup with a mesh lid, with a thin layer of coco fiber at the bottom, topped in some cork bark pieces. I placed the ooth on top of the bark and kept the substrate moist, but seldom misted the ooth and made sure the bark it was placed on stayed fairly dry. Very high air humidity but low surface moisture seems to be the key to incubating these types of arboreal Nyctiborids. This cup was housed within a larger 5 gallon enclosure for a different roach species, so the humidity stayed extra high. I kept them at around 80-85F°. The ooth took about 2.5 months to hatch after collection. Hard to say when exactly this one was laid obviously, but safe to assume 3-4 months is the average incubation period for Rochaina and possibly similar small, arboreal Nyctiboridae.
When the ooth hatched, it stayed very rigid, and the seam only opened up a tiny bit. The nymphs seemed to have some difficulties escaping the ooth, and after days of nymphs slowly trickling out, in the end I broke a small piece off from the rim to allow them to exit easier. The oothecae of these Nyctiborids are super tough, kinda feels like metal, and it was hard to break a piece off without just smashing the ooth.
Interestingly, as I would tease open the ooth over several days, while it was hard to get a good view of the contents, I would see some freshly teneral nymphs each day, which indicates that they hatched at staggered rates inside their ooth. It's very odd that these hatch inside the oothecae and then exit later, rather than the hatching being their exit from the ooth like in most roaches, quite unusual!
The resulting 25-30 nymphs are doing well in a half gallon screw top jar with a fully vented lid. There is a thin layer of coco fiber substrate, topped with artificial fern fronds as their hides. I'm keeping the substrate moist, but only lightly misting the fake foliage once or twice a week, again high air humidity and low surface moisture is definitely the way to go for these I've noticed, after figuring that out with R.bilunata. I'm feeding them artificial pollen, fish/dog food, and fresh fruits. Several of them have already molted to L2, interestingly in this species the patterning on L1 and L2 are identical, compared to the extreme patterning differences between L1 and L2 R.bilunata.
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| Ootheca (shortly after arrival) |
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| Ootheca hatching (note the seam is slightly open) |
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| L1 nymphs |
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| L2 nymph |
Such adorable and rotund little nymphs, thankfully they seem to be doing quite well for me! And thanks to having already figured out the humidity/moisture preferences of R.bilunata and extrapolating that methodology to these Peruvian cf. Rochaina metae, I was able to avoid any L1 mortality, seems they're all gonna make it to L2 with no issues. 😄
Will for sure keep you all posted on their progress, and the progress of the captive produced R.metae ooth, as once that ooth hatches I will have a much better idea as to the identity of these nymphs from the wild collected ooth.
Anyways, that does it for this post, thanks for reading, hope everyone enjoyed, and I'll see you all next time! 😉
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