I ignored Easter to catch beetles and emit depression

https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/2526641
https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/2526642

Caught these two, will attempt to breed. Of note is that Megapenthes contains at least one species of conservation concern in Europe.

Elater lecontei has reproduced

Found a wireworm in its enclosure today. I was starting to worry it hadn't mated.

Also, I got to see it naturally active again. Came out around midnight, fed on blueberry until sated, walked around for like a minute or two (I suspect it was seeking damper conditions as I hadn't misted in a while) and then went back under its potsherd to sleep. Apparently it's one of those bugs that's awake only when necessary.

The grayish brown nymph I caught did turn out to be Tiaja

Molted to adulthood last night (above; probably slightly teneral in pic). I neglected to post it here when it was still a juvenile but it looked like this.

The Deukmejian hoppers turned out to be a mix of Dictyobia (seemingly the regular semivitrea-looking sort, though perhaps a different cryptic species I suspect) and Dyctidea (apparently D. intermedia, though my specimen is weirdly brown so maybe not) by the way. Getting to and from Deuk is kind of a drive but I'll probably release them soon too.

I'm definitely planning to try my hand at dictys and dyctys again next year tho. Maybe even this summer, if my plants can lush up fast enough when Dictyssa adults make their summer appearance.


Down to one Xerophloea nymph after a Malva I was feeding them mysteriously wilted to death only 2-3 days while still immersed in water and thus subsequently set off a series of incidents indirectly leading to the other xerophloes dying. Not sure what happened, it had a really long taproot and all of it was wet so what the hell?

Released Dictyobia

Running short on dodder biomass, also my CalBG sunflower bushes were getting insufficiently lush and freaking the Dictyobia out. Apparently just like Croton if you don't water them enough they get droughtstressed even if the soil remains damp? I hate angiosperms sometimes.

I did get a look at their courtship behavior before the release though. Apparently when the male makes physical contact with an unmated female there's no fanfare, they just connect their genitalia. At a distance though there was some (audible! albeit faintly) singing which sounded like a zipper being zipped back and forth a few times, also when not singing the male sometimes moved its wings in a way that I can only describe as "trying to open a padlocked gate by pushing it repeatedly instead of unlocking it". Nothing too interesting happened though and the females didn't seem to react much if at all to whatever the male was doing. Honestly things like this are why I don't care about Coniontis any more. Insect courtship dances just seem kind of disappointing in general.

Also while catching more Tiaja I semiaccidentally caught and reared this thing to adulthood, since it looked like a Tiaja nymph (turns out was the same subfamily). Released it after.

bluglgh

The fat wireworm from a while ago pupated and matured while I wasn't looking. I split open the wood chunk to check up on it and saw an Athous axillaris adult. Gonna throw it in with the Elater. Probably not going to attempt to breed A. axillaris for various reasons, including my strong suspicion that Athous larvae require more animal protein than I have patience for.

All Lystridea dead despite my best efforts. Probably not going to try and catch any more this year.

Bought a bunch of generic nativeish plants from California Botanic Garden to feed the dictys, unsurprisingly the leaves were infested with various bugs and microbes. Sigh. At least my rescued skirt tetras enjoyed eating the aphids.

Intend to throw Hoplomachidea back to its habitat so I can concentrate on pest control (see above). Maybe it will have injected eggs into one of my plants by then. Some females of that species seem able to fly (most if not all males seem flighted) and I'd rather concentrate on obligately flightless bugs. Still, my intuitive guess is that they're not as insensitive to anthropogenic harm as some wing-dimorphic bugs.

Current inventory (or, more accurately, current inventory that I care to mention):

Dictyobia cf. semivitrea, many
cf. Dyctidea intermedia?, x4 I think?
Tiaja, x1 (the other one died from an indirectly aphid related incident)
cf. Uroleucon (pictured above), nativelooking aphids from a wild alate that flew to my Baccharis salicifolia one day

Elater lecontei, x1 (is it even a fertilized female?)
Athous axillaris, x1

Eleodes littoralis, x2
Phloeodes diabolicus, x1
Disabled Eleodes acuticauda, x1 (it's still alive after all this time)!

Calasterella californica, x1
Croton californicus, x3
Cuscuta subinclusa
New CalBG plants (mostly Encelia californica)
Unidentified leafy liverworts (not new, it's the ones I've posted about)
Various other things I don't care to mention




There hasn't been anything of interest to say these years (indeed, I would say most of my life has been miserable and bland) but I swear I'm an interesting person! I swear!!!

6

Single Hoplomachidea consors female acquired but I don't feel like talking about it because I'm tired and miserable. Also I missed the courtship ritual of my first Dictyobia pair by several minutes because years of chronic understimulation made me involuntarily zone out right at the crucial moment.

Freshly molted Dictyobia adult for eye candy. I wonder what the red thing inside it is, fresh nymphs have it too (so do hardened nymphs if you hold them up to the light). Lystridea also contains the red thing.

new acquisitions (part 5)

Went back to Deukmejian Wilderness Park, acquired some more grayish hoppers.

Also found a single different-looking nymph, note the smaller head and orangy brown color. I wouldn't have taken it home if I had seen it was parasitized, but the hopper was like half a cm long and I didn't realize the infection was there till I got home, so after some deliberation I popped the wasp grub. I accidentally sprained (is that even the right word?) one of the nymph's hindlegs in the process and the leg couldn't move for about 12 hours but this afternoon I was checking up on it and all the legs were functional again.

I don't normally endorse killing parasitoids because they're important to the ecosystem, equal rights for parasites, blah etc., but I really wanted to see if I could get this nymph to adulthood and make it half of a breeding pair before the season ends. I mean, a lot of flightless aridland planthoppers here are really hard to get one's hands on, remember how I was complaining about how I hadn't seen Tiaja for years?

Anyways all the new acquisitions (including the orangy brown) are feeding well on dodder. Edit: make that "are" a "have been". I think I squished the orangy nymph by accident.

Dictyobia aren't doing cool things at each other

Assembled some adults into same-sex and different-sex pairs. They pretty much ignored each other, didn't even mate. Evidently at least some of them (esp. fem, due to eclosing later) are sexually immature. I mean I was expecting some sexual immaturity since all my other hoppers had to feed for a number of days before mating, but I'm kinda disappointed there wasn't some sort of communication dance even the unripe adults would do.

Also, I observed some specimens to switch the asymmetry of which wing was raised higher than the other (not in relation to social interaction; just spontaneously, before I even housed them together).

More Dictyobia adults

Gonna stop announcing new adults now.

Of interest is that one individual seems to be "right-handed" in terms of wing-raising behavior, the others so far all seem "left-handed".





Pissonotus delicatus released, it was doing perfectly fine but I realized I was biting off more than I could chew again and needed to keep my unhealthy insect-hoarding habits in check. It was never my favorite anyway. Also I know widespread insects are said to be paradoxically in more danger than rare ones but P. delicatus strikes me more as the sort of widespread insect that'll do fine in the upcoming decades than the sort that's declining drastically. I could be wrong tho. Maybe it's extra vulnerable to climate change because it naturally lives in harsh disturbed environments and can't take any harsher a life than it's already tolerating? Still, I'm not getting many "common bug about to decline violently" vibes from it. I'm more worried about periodically-outbreaking-but-sometimes-naturally-rare taxa like Xerophloea, Vanessa, Oedemasia, & Trirhabda.

In any case I assume the pisso laid eggs inside my telegraphweed, I'll take a laissez-faire approach to its offspring if any hatch.

Matured a second dicty adult today

 It was fully hardened when I found it but when I threw it in with the first adult they seemingly ignored each other. Maybe both sexes need to be present even to induce nonsexual social interactions (since those may be an indirect method of competing for mates)?

First dicty adult eclosed last night!

Rest still nymphs, I'll be watching them carefully since females probably only mate once in their lives unless copulation is interrupted and I'd hate to miss whatever wingflapping courtship dance they do for it.

It refused the Artemisia I put it on (probably because it was producing drought foliage when I bought it) and instead began drinking from the white clover I was using to make Tiaja oviposit.