I have been mistreated by the hospital

 Not posting details here, sorry! I will however note that it is a pretty big-name hospital.

I am home now. Was actually getting sicker as a direct result of the hospital's actions impeding my recovery.

I have COVID-19 now

 I don't want to reveal too many personal details in public, but long story short, I was absolutely fastidious about sanitation protocols, I wore masks long after everyone else stopped, I frequently didn't leave my house for weeks at a time. But no amount of caution can save you if you're being forced to eat off poorly washed plates (with rice grains and sauce still on them) at shitty restaurants just not to starve [note that this sentence is potentially misleading but is factually true - I eat well, for lack of a better phrase.]

I don't live in a bloody slum. So why do I live like I'm in one when I'm in one of the most well-off cities in the nation?

Apparently C. sanguinicollis larvae have a summer dormancy

 

Which makes sense, considering that it's when all the sage scrub plants dry up in the heat.

Abnormal photoperiods from indoors lighting and abnormally generous moisture regimes also did not break the dormancy, misting causes them to walk around in annoyance but eventually they retract and stop moving again. With that being said, the grubs do consume small amounts of food despite the dormancy.

Some have voluntarily refused both food and water for as long as 5 days, possibly even longer.

Got a cool video

 

Nooooooooo!

 I have recently had to, umm, let's euphemistically call it a forced vacation. Had to temporarily give my bugs to an aforementioned entomological acquaintance. Cryptocephalus sanguinicollis was unharmed afterwards (indeed, the grubs more than doubled in size in the two weeks I was away and are now very roughly a third of the size of an adult specimen), but the probable Haplodesmidae and Macrosternodesmidae suffered heavy mortality, and now the only live millipedes I have left are a few of the haplodesmid-shaped ones. I think he overwatered them to death despite my warnings, cause when I came back the dirt was all soggy and glistening (my impression is that they probably died of humidity-related causes instead of drowning). He also reports that his Pachybrachis bivittatus all died from excess sun exposure, with no surviving eggs. Additionally, the Huntington worts (which I also left to him) are significantly moldier than before, though still bright green. It's possible the mold's only growing on the dead parts of the worts, I'm not sure. I'm not exactly mad at him, cause everyone makes mistakes, he has a busy schedule, and I'm a pretty forgiving person, but, well, ouch.

Asterella was unharmed because I left it completely dried out for the duration of my absence, and since it can do the poikilohydric resurrection plant thingy it was fine afterwards. Other plants I didn't mention are all fine, and the Eleodes carbonaria is doing fine too.



In other news, my current dodder is Cuscuta californica var. californica, according to the key. Also confirmed the one that died is indeed the subinclusa I provisionally thought it was, but the only surviving fragment is at that acquaintance's house.

I also scooped up some ostracods (maybe they're tiny conchostracans; probably not but I can't tell the difference) from an ornamental waterfall fountain that various birds visit. Looks like that implausible-sounding adage about birds dispersing fish eggs and crustaceans via wet feathers/legs is true, after all. I have no inherent interest in ostracod husbandry but they might be useful for some sort of restoration project later on in some unforeseen future.

Plymouth Elementary update

I've checked up on some of the wood I've moved in there, and added some additional wood. I didn't see any specimens underneath the logs despite my efforts to provide a damp microclimate protected from insolation*, but at night the usual largebodied invasive urban bugs (Armadillidium, etc.) show up to stroll around on it. They've already eaten all the splitgill fruiting bodies, apparently. Guess I'm not gonna attract any fungus beetles any time soon.

Not sure about how the native termites that came with one of the logs are doing because lizards/mammals keep shitting on/around that one and I can't be bothered to get my hands dirty. Also, Xylocopa and other native bees were in the area but showed no interest in using the wood either.







*In soggy and cold European countries where a lot of saproxylic organism research is conducted sun exposure is important for many threatened taxa, but what little research literature I could find on stuff in Mediterranean climates suggests the opposite is true where I live. It sounds intuitive (too hot + no water = all the bugs die of thirst) but that doesn't explain why weirdo hyperthermophile insects don't seem to be interested. I mean, there's Psocodea in the garden that can live their entire lives in dead marcescent leaves crisping in the sun, "magically" summoning liquid water from vapors in the air or something like that. How are things like those refusing to eat my log? I don't get it.

asterello aster jello

 

Don't mind me, I'm just posting a pic for my personal records (note 2 self: Deukmejian sample).

Also, I don't feel like checking to see whether I posted about it before but I have the annual-looking Santa Fe Dam dodder in culture again. Sadly my portion of the Cuscuta subinclusa (perennial species) is still dead (unless there's a dormant endophytic nub I'm unaware of), and I'm hoping the acquaintance I gave a piece of that C. subinclusa clone to manages to get it to put on enough biomass that he can safely give me some of it back; right now his portion is also ailing and I'd rather he not return any pieces to me yet, for fear of them dying in transit.

Depresso updates

 

Peppertree dodder: devoting most of its energy to making flowers, most of the vegetative portions seem to be wilting for some reason. I hope it's not making flowers because it's about to kick the bucket (I've noticed that stressing it induces flowers).

Lace bugs (pictured): they vibrate inaudibly. I have been staring at some in hopes of finding some complex dynamics of interest, but I haven't been able to make heads or tails of the situation despite watching them for hrs. Although in other lace bugs they are used in various maternal care behaviors the species I have around here don't use them for any clear function. I've tried everything I can think of: disturbing specimens, introducing foreign specimens, watching courtship behavior (which doesn't seem to involve the vibration type I'm investigating and isn't very exciting to watch it seems), even trying to see if there's any vibrational correlate to leaf lushness. No luck. I do know that both nymphs and adults do it, that specimens may occasionally vibrate even when on my hand or otherwise frightened (but do not seem to use it as a distress signal and typically do not vibrate when alarmed), that adults sometimes fan their wings during vibration bouts, and that specimens do not tend to visibly react to others' vibrations or wing fanning, but not much else.

Casebearers: Cryptocephalus sanguinicollis grubs seem easy to rear and eat a wide variety of rotten plant matter. They also accept nonrotten fare, including grocery vegetables and rose petals. They don't do much besides eating and walking.

Millipedes: haplodesmid-type things definitely getting out of hand. Also if I didn't mention this before sometimes they make egg nests with only one egg inside (these nests don't seem any smaller than the ones with around a half dozen eggs). Inspected the gut of the new Griffith Park macrosternodesmid-type thing and it's still dark, implying it's still feeding on rotten matter in captivity. It's nice that (since its body is translucent) I can see the animal's digestive system without killing it. Added some white rot wood to both macrosternothing localities' cups, because I suspect brown rot may not be the right type of rot to feed them.

Asterella californica: grows slowly, doesn't do much.

Eleodes carbonaria: doesn't do much either. Hisserdude said it seemed male, which was my suspicion too.

More tenebs moved, plus commentary on invasive natives

 Elysian Park is closer to NHMLA than Griffith Park is, although I assume that before the surrounding land was urbanized their darkling populations were genetically connected. Anyways, I booked a taxi ride to Elysian today and caught about 20. Tenebs from there will be posted at the same link as the one in the previous post.

Also, while strolling around Santa Fe Dam recently I saw a small, localized population of tidytip daisies and purple-houses and several other species of so-called native plant that are common in commercial native wildflower seed mixes. I mean, I have trust issues from rampant mislabeling of flora in the horticultural industry (sometimes the mistakes aren't discovered until many years later), but some of the other questionable things in there were the same morphospecies as Gilia tricolor, G. capitata, and Collinsia (likely heterophylla but I can't be bothered to check). These are not locally native here at all, and given that the population seems to be self-sustaining without irrigation, as well as spreading into patches of truly native annuals, I think we're dealing with an incipient intra-state invasion here. The nature center didn't look to have planted them (none of those plants are in the nature center's official garden, which also contains locally nonnative flora, albeit not the same ones; I fear the nature center sunflower bushes may engage in maladaptive introgression with wild Encelia), but Californian plants have been known to do intra-state invasion things of this sort before; just look at Lupinus arboreus and the havoc it's wrecked (note that arboreus does not appear to be present cultivated or feral in my area; I am merely using the lupine as a talking point).

It's a shame that no one on the internet seems to be talking about the potential problem Gilia and co. pose. Some other questionable choices I've seen elsewhere include the wrong Eriogonum species/subspecies (this is particularly problematic since some insects have been proven to die if consuming the wrong genotype of an otherwise suitable host Eriogonum), the Californian orange poppy Eschscholzia californica (which has already invaded Chile, has explosively dispersed seeds, and can grow in sidewalk cracks, and seems to be hated by almost every insect here, even Apis mellifera, which visits it only reluctantly), and various Nemophila/Clarkia. Again, there's pretty much nothing on the internet warning against them; some websites even claim they're locally native here. So it's no surprise even the world-class botanical institutions* are doing these for their native gardens, as opposed to popcornflowers and Zeltnera venusta and Linanthus dianthiflorus and Camissoniopsis. L. dianthiuflorus and popcornflowers are barely even commercially available. Sigh.

*I know the NHMLA is doing this on purpose for its own reasons, and while I don't entirely agree with that (mostly I fear it will cause shenanigans related to insect microevolution) I'm going to let it off the hook. On the other hand, I'm giving the Huntington's semi-"free-range" Nemophila and Gilia population a rather concerned glance, although they're unlikely to escape compared to the ones around Peck Road Water Conservation Park.

Update re: Griffith teneb transplant

 Luck was had. Here is every live individual caught for the transplant.

Also I found some feather millipedes under a really unpromising-looking log only a few yards away from Griffith's irrigated lawn (I didn't keep the pedes of course, they are notorious for dying in culture). But it was neat that such a sensitive specialist is still managing to survive in such a terrible-seeming habitat. There were no visible macrofungi and the wood smelled awful, as seems to be typical for wood in this county.

New pet

 

Was messing around at Santa Fe Dam and found this Eleodes carbonaria individual under a wood chunk. Although rather plain-looking, I knew at first sight that this was one of the rarely-encountered Eleodes species but it wouldn't hold still so I put it in a vial to photograph later.

Well, guess who accidentally brought themself home a darkling? Yeah, you guessed it. I totally forgot about the vial and went home and, well, then I was stuck at home with a darkling in a vial.


I've noticed that this species doesn't run around rabidly in circles like E. acuticauda and gracilis (and Coniontis) do. Instead, it sleeps most of the day and most of the night, and when it does come out (usually to eat fruits and vegetables) it seems pretty calm. Also, I'm really a fan of the way its elytra and pronotum have matching textures, and how its gait is smooth and fluid instead of clunky like acuticauda/gracilis and a lot of the other long-legged darklings. Was this thing custom made to appeal to me?

Anyways, it's certainly no fun watching a beetle that spends much of its life asleep, but I like its not-circling behavior so I'll keep it captive for now in hopes that maybe I'll be able to captive breed a colony and release specimens to places in need of darkling repopulation. Also, speaking of which, I'm heading to Griffith Park to catch some darklings (to throw into NHMLA) tomorrow, wish me luck. I'll probably avoid tossing non-Griffith ones into NHMLA for the sake of local genetics, just in case the museum decides to build a wildlife corridor all the way into the hills one day far into the future.