Now that I am in the habit of following the official dates of the seasons, this post shall span from the Winter Solstice on December 21st to the Spring Equinox on March 21st.
The best to come of this Spring has to be the shipment of Thyropygus pachyurus I received on March 21st itself. I have been working with a colony of captive-bred juveniles since February 18th, 2020, but this shipment constituted three subadults and three adults. Coincidentally, I seem to have two females and one male in both age groups. My juveniles were large by comparison to native US species, but the adults are about nine inches long! Somewhat unfortunately, I shall soon be seeing the three adults and a subadult off to their final home as I was but a relay point in their journey. They will be going to Arthroverts once weather is ideal for shipping and Easter has passed. I will be keeping a sexed pair of subadults for myself, however, and I hope that these will begin breeding within a year or so. I have been keeping my juveniles in the same general conditions as I described a while ago in my millipede substrate post. I have noticed that they really seem to appreciate a whole, rotten log to burrow into. Following the most recent substrate change, I gave the juveniles a log that already had the bark detached and laid on top. They immediately congregated underneath that bark. My eventual goal for this species would be to see it replace the now-nonexistent Archispirostreptus gigas in the US hobby. The USDA is the main roadblock at the moment, but this species seems to be quite benign and may be allowed to a wider group of hobbyists eventually.
The F2 generation of my lubber grasshoppers (Romalea microptera) began hatching on January 14th. I started the nymphs off in a tank with dozens of cuttings of a prolific Pellionia pulchra plant that is intent on taking over my scorpion tank. I was hoping that the plant would be a suitable food source for them that I could just grow inside the tank with the grasshoppers, but the picky plant murderers disdained that idea. I now have a tank full of a plant that the inhabitants have no use for other than a perch. It could be worse, but it would have been such a convenient food source considering I prune the scorpion tank every couple months. Trandescantia sp. are still the favorite food, and the one cutting of wandering Jew that I planted in the tank was demolished within days. I am currently taking advantage of spring bulbs, and feeding them well-washed daffodils. They seem to approve, and I have noticed a couple pre-sub-adult nymphs.
Interestingly, although I did not find any more oothecae than the original two despite a more thorough search, I noticed what appeared to be egg shells in the main tank itself. I am thinking I may have missed some oothecae in my searches because the original two oothecae were placed in 32-oz hatching cups. I estimate that the two oothecae hatched at least 60 nymphs together, so I may have over a hundred nymphs hiding in the plantings. I do not plan to conduct a census of these hooligans, however, so this shall be left to speculation.
Arwen died on February 7th, which makes her the longest mantis to have ever lived in my care (about eleven months). She laid fifteen oothecae prior to her passing, so I should have plenty of Arwen Jrs. presently. Right now, I have the oothecae prepared for a staggered emergence with most of them in the fridge.
The giant stag beetle larvae (Lucanus elaphus) are doing well. The largest of the male grubs is approaching 10 grams and is as large as the largest grubs I have found in the wild. The photo below shows the tanks of the captive bred grubs. The numbering scheme is that the number of the female (27, 28, or 30) is followed by the number of the larvae and separated by a dash. First, yes, there was a female number 29 (these four were the ones from July), but for some reason, there were no larvae to be found in her tank. Second, GSB 30-1, 2, and 3 were used in an experiment with a different type of flake soil fermentation method. Unfortunately, that flake soil exploded in mold, and I could not save those three grubs. The basic idea of that flake soil was to use a rice cooker to maintain a temperature of 150˚F, which was ideal for certain microbial processes to decompose the lignin and other inedible components of raw sawdust. The supposed benefit was that it would take less than a week to complete the fermentation period, whereas normal flake soil takes at least a few weeks. I have gone back to normal flake soil and rotten wood substrates, but it might be worth more experimentation for someone with more larvae to feed. Finally, it is indeed odd that there was only one grub from Giant Stag Beetle 27. I did not see any sign of cannibalism or such, just one lonely grub.
That is most of the happenings of the past couple months. Winter is cold and mostly boring for those who enjoy finding the larger arthropod species, and therefore, the ongoing colonies are my primary focus. It has warmed up in my area, and I am chasing tiger beetles right now. My green findings posts (2019 and 2020) may soon become a trilogy.