Introducing Pomacea! (also, small Bagrada update)

This is my Pomacea diffusa specimen! The store labeled it as "bridgesii", which is known to be an incorrect ID. I've run it through a key and it has the characteristic 90-degree-ish shell suture.

I involuntarily acquired the watersnail last month after an unfortunate series of events involving an irresponsible buyer and subsequent month-long fasting session for it. So far, its physical health appears to have improved since I began rehabilitation efforts; a crackly pale growth ring (presumably from the fasting period) I saw on it has been followed by some more normal-looking deposits of shell. However, it appears to have become somewhat dormant in the current cold weather; it refuses to ingest whole vegetables and will sporadically eat somewhat large quantities of algal wafer (which contain few algae and lots of green food coloring + starch). This also makes it quite a boring specimen, as it spends all its time sleeping, feeding, or travelling aimlessly. I doubt it will become less boring during the spring though, except for sleeping less and eating more.

I am rather concerned for its future safety and psychological health, though. While outdoor air temperatures here never get cold enough to kill all the cold-intolerant bugs, they are cold enough to induce in me constant sneezing (and are also below the reported thermal tolerances of diffusa). The situation indoors is of course somewhat better, but in the past it has nearly approached below 65 deg Fahrenheit (the danger zone). My deceased flightless Cotinis mutabilis male (rest in peace) was not harmed by them, but water is usually colder than the surrounding air. I am also stuck with a relatively small jar for housing it, since my juvenile koi specimens would likely harass or outcompete it to death if I threw it in their tank; this means there are no dark hiding areas for it. I am not sure if Pomacea absolutely require hiding areas to prevent stress, like carabids/tenebrionids, but it often drops to the bottom of its jar (a defensive maneuver) if I turn on excessively bright lights at night.

The Bagrada hilaris female (which is just as boring despite its large appetite) just lost a tarsus, by the way. I suspect I may have pinned its leg under the lid, but my memories only recall having said leg near said lid. In any case I have provided it with a dead leaf to sit on, since it is no longer capable of walking up plastic walls and cannot reach vertical sleeping areas, which it prefers.

Bagrada hilaris drinks the last of my defrosted broccoli

Can you believe it singlehandedly exhausted my entire supply of stored brassicaceans in just a month?

More lichens, part 1

What we had previously thought was Phaeophyscia hirsuta is actually Physciella chloantha! All my old commentary about hirsuta still applies though, except that chloantha is definitely not under conservational danger. The lichenologist I sent my samples to has declared that chloantha is rarely collected from California; mine is the first ever record from Los Angeles County and also highly unusual for being on an eucalyptus tree! Clearly lichens are just as scientifically unpopular as bugs; how else could a popular park filled with tons of chloantha escape researcher attention?

By the way, the chloantha samples I kept for cultivation purposes all developed moldy smells, despite the thalli appearing quite healthy; I had to throw them out. The wild yellow tree lichens suffered a similar fate, except that I was unable to throw out the tree. Even the lichenless tree parts smell terrible when moistened; how is a living branch growing mold?

Here are some microscope pics of chloantha the lichenologist sent me and gave permission to use; as mentioned before, gray thalli are dry and turn green seconds after hydration.

Fun misadventures with the Brassicaceae

In addition to the four caterpillars mentioned previously and shown above, I also later found a brown cutworm-shaped one in a different brassicacean bag and caught two starving Bagrada hilaris females to accompany all of the caterpillars. Unfortunately, the second female ran off and died one day when I was replacing their food; the first one is still doing well today and has apparently become somewhat habituated to my presence. At least I gave the deceased one a few extra meals before it died...? Sigh.

On October 14, two parasitoid wasp larvae emerged, finished off their hosts' green corpses by eating from the outside in, and then began vigorously silking the floor.

the parasitoids appear to be conspecifics too

The next day, I was quite dismayed to find that #1 had developed brown spots. Note the tiny hemipteran near it; I strongly suspect it is an anthocorid and thus carnivorous. I threw the true bug outdoors and trashed the unfortunate larva.

#2 and freshly emerged #3 were fine. #4 emerged later in the day.

Several more days later, they continued drooling silk without pupating. I was getting slightly worried, as they had somehow drooled a whole ring around the cup edge despite being seemingly incapable of  voluntary locomotion. Fortunately, all of them finally turned into wasp pupae after I put a large quantity of paper inside to serve as silk anchor points.

Several days later after that, the brown caterpillar was motionless. I thought the decaying broccoli gases had killed it, but another wasp larva exited the corpse.

brown larva, before demise

Unfortunately, I could not rear any of the wasps correctly. The green caterpillar parasitoids failed to eclose from their pupae properly, and I fed them to vertebrates out of pity. The syrphid(?) puparium produced a correctly shaped wasp though. It died before I saw it; perhaps it was too entangled in the others’ silk?

adults (note odd abdomen)