White hopper turned out to be Graphocephala cythura

 

it's blue when teneral

Native here, but an obscure record mentions it having invaded Hawaii, which is concerning. While some invasive taxa are certainly under threat in their native ranges and G. cythura appears more or less unable to survive in the suburbs here (well, either that or occurs in low enough densities that I've never seen it) I don't think it's in much conservational danger.



Also let me vomit some generic photos of the aforementioned Xerophloea duo (note their close textural/color resemblance to Croton) because I've nothing better to do. I'm so bored, photography is so dull.

They're a pretty widespread species too but I'm keeping them around because it costs me nothing and cause I suspect they might be locally (if not globally) in danger.

Update: after hardening the blue has mostly gone away, it's green now.

Oh, and by the way, the willow worm's big now.

 

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 Black Micrutalis dead. I noticed it was suffering from whatever ailment makes hoppers "starve" to death surrounded by food but I couldn't get it back to its habitat in time. I really tried so hard to but [reasons I cannot mention without compromising privacy]. I fare disproportionately poorly in no-win situations and tend to make a mess of myself. In any case, the beige one has been released successfully, apparently in part because it wasn't overexerting itself to death like the black one. 

If Santa Fe Dam weren't being destroyed by idiot restorationists I wouldn't even have to deal with hopper rearing! Not that that'd do much good anyway, considering my inability to get them to stop or to even assess which hoppers are higher conservation priority*, and the rate at which shortlived insects evolve to lose adaptions to the wild when cultured, but it's marginally better than nothing, right? Right?

I'm sick of seeing insects die. Considering that all my "slots" are full or unusable I think I'm just going to stop acquiring more arthropod species for the foreseeable future, lest I create any bigger a mess.





*Commonness isn't a reliable indicator.




Xerophloea and Dictyssa are still doing okay, besides that one and only one dicty is getting restless (oviposition urges?)

Going to have to get rid of Scolops and the weevil

 Former still seems to be suffering from drought-legacy phytochemical effects as it abandoned both willow and Croton (and this despite the willow currently being sopping wet), latter flags petioles and pedicels (not eating the actual leaves/flowers, which die from the flagging) and my Croton specimen simply isn't large enough to tolerate this form of wasteful chewing.

Annoyingly, whatever drought-related phytochem changes certainly don't seem to be affecting this small (1cm) measuring worm, an adult must have oviposited on/near my large* Salix lasiolepis specimen back when the plant was still in my yard. I mean, it's welcome to stay and eat the willow since hardly anyone else wants to, but I'm irritated it seems so content when the hoppers are stressing out. 

*I have acquired more willows yesterday, probably the same species; they were juveniles near the Bridge to Nowhere, and were so crowded they could not have all survived to adulthood so I figured taking a few would be harmless.

Before I realized the Scolops was so distressed I also took this nymph from the Bridge to Nowhere sprouts. Fortunately, so far it has shown no signs of distress after being put on the large specimen (I am not feeding it on the small specimens so they can grow leaves quicker). Not sure why it's white, because S. lasiolepis leaf undersides are white but not this white.

Also took home this Micrutalis pair today (pictured here before capture). They're color polymorphic. Only membracid I've seen ever, and the most common hemipteran on Croton californicus at Santa Fe Dam (but still relatively sparse). I've noted these are often present on small, droughted, and/or thermalrefugeless plants in the wild so figured they probably wouldn't throw a fit in captivity.

Current non-dormant inventory:
- Salix lasiolepis (several)
- Croton californicus x2 (gained one today by pulling it out of a sidewalk crack)
- Heterotheca grandiflora x1
- Calasterella californica x1
- Unidentified white hopper and caterpillar x1 each
- Dictyssa obliqua x2
- Micrutalis x2
- Xerophloea peltata x2 (still feeding calmly)
- Cuscuta subinclusa (much)
- Cuscuta californica (much, but less; I've been neglecting watering its host because mentally ill)
- Various hosts for the dodders, mostly weeds and domesticates
- Disabled Eleodes acuticauda female I offhandedly mentioned a year or so ago x1 (it has not lost any leg since I rescued it from the wilderness, unfortunately it's stressed right now, apparently because its shelter objects have gotten old and stale and apparently smell wrong to it; I need to find it a new thing to hide under)

I also plan to germinate a new Navarretia batch soon.

Soft-chaparral hemipterans update

Caught 1 more D. obliqua (pictured above) yesterday (new total: 2), both specimens still feeding well on dodder.

Caught a pale green morph of what appears to be another X. peltata on the same excursion, both specimens motionless and apparently feeding well on Croton.

Caught weird pinstriped Croton associate weevil on the same excursion, seems to be doing well in the enclosure with the hoppers.

Scolops is not fleeing the hosts but kept shifting around between spots on the willow, and is now of its own volition on the Croton again (unclear if this is male matesearching or if something's still subtly wrong with the host hydration status or whatever it is); I did not find any additional specimens, so it has no mate.



Also of note is that I've noticed D. obliqua will lower their wings when frightened, that when only one of the two wings is raised it seems to be consistently the left one, as is the tendency among Elicini (side effect of brain lateralization?), and that voluntary (as opposed to alarm-induced) locomotion is at least sometimes accompanied by slow, monotonous up-and-down wing flapping movements reminiscent of tephritid wiggling. While I assume the wings mimic chewed holes in foliage, it is clear that breaking up the animal's outline can't be the reason (or at least the only reason) they're held raised, or else why would frightened animals lower them?

Tephritids use their wings as social signals but I've not seen my two dictys socially interacting so far (the wing-flapping observation occurred before I caught individual #2). Like the other hemipterans currently in my care they spend most of their time sitting still, as one might expect from an animal adapted to a low-nutrition diet. As I suspect they are male and female I might try and prod them into standing next to each other to see if they're interested in mating.

Update: prodded them into chemosensory and visual contact with each other. No detectable response.

Scolops threw a fit too

 I have moved it to a willow in hopes it is more palatable than Croton.

Dictyssa and Xerophloea are still feeding well on Cuscuta and Croton respectively.

Found weird hoppers from Santa Fe Dam today

 

Santa Fe Dam. All on Croton californicus. Attempting to rear these 4 conservation. Note that despite all being camouflage-colored C. californicus has none of these textures on its body. They must get away with the poor camouflage somehow.

I've a C. californicus in a pot btw.

Update: they're respectively Scolops californicus (well, probably), Dictyssa obliqua, Xerophloea peltata. Feeding on C. californicus confirmed for the first, and probably for the third, judging by the latter's behavior. The dicty threw a fit after some hours (possibly from noxious phytochemistry increasing from my not having watered the host enough in the past, even though it was well watered at the time I offered it) but I offered it a bit of Cuscuta subinclusa and it fed on that.

Scolops californicus and Dictyssa obliqua are endemics, while Xerophloea peltata is more widespread and reported to be a minor pest of economic plants, but all 3 may be of some conservation value in my area due to their seemingly tight association with soft chaparral, a habitat type that is disproportionately destroyed in my area (unlike the very different-looking hard chaparral). Of course, being so understudied, no one actually knows exactly how threatened or not they are, so I'm going off educated guesses and all that.

C. sanguinicollis breeding project now cancelled

I can't seem to keep them placated for more than a few hours a day. Perhaps my movements around the room scare them (although they don't fly away immediately when I'm near them, and sometimes don't react at all), or perhaps they endogenously attempt to fly even when all their physical needs are met.

Anyways, I released the female, euthanized the pupa (it metamorphosed so poorly it could not walk after eclosion), and am going to release my new female soon. The last of the 4 individuals is still a larva and shows no intent to pupate.

Rest of my life's been uneventful. Dodders and Calasterella and aridland wildflowers are doing basically nothing worth my time to mention. Still depressed to death, only respite is the too-infrequent Ultraviolet Grasslands games.

Oh, and that weird hairy mystery plant from the China trip is probably some sort of Draba.

Addendum to prev post

The sanguinicollis female appears to operate according to the following protocol when not frightened by handling:

- If no or only small patches of direct sunlight are visible anywhere, remain calm/lethargic on host.

- If direct sunlight is shining on body, bask and become slightly more active, but nevertheless remain calm/lethargic on host.

- If no direct sunlight is visible within the enclosure but large quantities are visible outside the window, attempt to fly towards window and become restless.

Keeping the curtains closed until the sun moves into a position where it's directly shining on the beetle seems to keep the animal calm throughout the entirety of the day.

Cryptocephalus sanguinicollis success

One specimen is now adult (a female), with another freshly changed into a pupa. Perhaps the acquaintance I enlisted to care for them during China did something right that I didn't (more consistent/stable humidity?) that made the larvae eat more regularly, or perhaps their endogenous clocks simply told them they had to metamorphose.

Said acquaintance's roommate was a little shit who was grabbing and inspecting my specimens without his permission and accidentally cracked open the latter larva's fecal case shortly before it pupated, but I suspect the pupa will survive anyway. I'm keeping it very lightly damp to mimic the humidity conditions presumably experienced inside a case.

Unfortunately, as you can see here the pronotum and wings are a bit misshapen, and more concerningly it only seems to have 3 legs (or, worse, maybe it has 6 legs but 3 are still larviform, a thing that's known to happen during severe pupal molting disruptions sometimes). I swear to God I'll give that roommate the beating up of his life if I ever meet him in person. Even my acquaintance never liked him.

Also, my single adult's behaving normally. As I had hypothesized, tricking it into thinking there was no ceiling helped. Long story short I got one of those giant mesh pop-up cages, put a hostplant (Rubus) in in a way that the leaves weren't touching the walls/ceiling, and put the beetle on the plant. It usually flew away in alarm from being handled (and, being too attracted to light, was psychologically unable to fly/walk back to the host once on the cage walls/ceiling), but sometimes it would get hungry enough to start eating as it was climbing up to the top to prepare for its escape flight and forget it was scared, and (more rarely) it would initiate the escape flight and bounce off the wall in just the right way to end up back on the host by accident. In both of these cases it would calm down and remain on the host (however escape flights that were only a cm or two long did not placate it when they ended on a leaf, probably because they were not long enough to count as a "successful escape" to its instincts).

The adult seems not to like eating Salix lasiolepis for some reason (but will calm down and remain on it anyway when I use the above technique), which is why I switched to Rubus. Ideally I would've used Salvia apiana or Acmispon glaber as those seem to be preferred wild hosts.




Edit: it got mad at being in the shade (because my house only gets direct sunlight in the mid to late afternoon) and left its host. I re-placated it, but this animal is going to be one hell of a pain to keep satisfied. Don't want to put its cage outdoors which might kill it from overheating. But then again, I've seen wild specimens making no attempt to seek shade at temperatures physically painful to myself, and I'm pretty heat-tolerant.

I am no longer in China

I do intend to add some additional commentary below later though.