Holiday update

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The Bagrada hilaris female has now spent more than two months in captivity! Outdoors it would almost certainly have been dead of age by now. Despite the tarsus loss (and another tarsus ceasing to function, though still physically attached) it is nevertheless quite vigorous when warm. It has, however, suddenly ceased to move on several occasions while halfway in the act of scrubbing its legs (see pic); said legs then dangle awkwardly in the air for considerable periods before it stands up normally again. I have never seen anything even vaguely similar in an arthropod; only Cotinis mutabilis comes close (feeding mutabilis always fall asleep on top of their meals sooner or later; if gently tapped they may slowly lick a few times before continuing to sleep). I speculate that the hemipteran may simply be too cold and unable to perform any non-feeding behavior without becoming metabolically sedated by the temperature. In any case, its newfound inability to climb walls has greatly increased the ease of maintenance, since the jar lid is now permanently off and thus discourages mold growth.

The Pomacea diffusa specimen has survived temperatures slightly below 65F° and continues to survive. It shows little interest in hiding or investigating the plastic plant I put in its jar for psychological enrichment purposes; it has also ceased to feed entirely or almost entirely, having evidently entered full-power overwintering mode. I may offer it a cave; perhaps it will be deemed more suitable than the counterfeit angiosperm?

Physciella chloantha coughs up several surprises ( + bonus algae)

The acetone vaporized today, and I busied myself with hydrating the P. chloantha sample via mist bottle. It turned an unusually dark shade of green (compare to my earlier samples, which were much paler in greenness after wetting; perhaps the acetone dissolved some unknown secondary metabolites (no such metabolites have ever been detected in chloantha)? A while later, I saw a whitish round microarthropod strolling about on the sample surface. How did it survive 30+ minutes of immersion in pure acetone the other day? In addition to its usefulness as a lichen metabolite dissolver, acetone is used in entomological killing jars! Furthermore, the Eucalyptus bark the lichens were attached to smelled faintly moldy as soon as they became damp, quite alarmingly. I had only collected them days ago, and kept them dry all that time!

I have pulled out some lichen thalli and am attempting to keep them on plastic to isolate them from the mold and arthropods, but several turned brown within hours (death via mechanical injury?).



Here are microscope pics of some bonus green algae (and possibly some barely visible lichen threadlets) I pulled off a parking lot tree. The lichenologist thought the former were Lepraria/Leprocaulon lichens until seeing algal cells swim around during hydration.

More lichens, part 2

After a painfully long wait, I finally managed to acquire an additional Physciella chloantha chunk yesterday! It has been soaked in acetone for disinfection purposes. To further decrease my chances of growing mold, I will be hydrating it less often (one 12-hr period every 3 or 4 days).

Here are some other synanthropic lichen specimens located in "my" yard; they are currently waiting for the lichenologist's ID. Interestingly, the black palm tree dots are largely restricted to areas of injured bark carved into a pattern by some dumb vandal long ago; furthermore, they do not change color when wet (the gray palm dots and probably also persimmon dots turn green like chloantha in the rain).

gray dots from persimmon

black palm dots

gray palm dots