I obtain more Physciella chloantha

 Wish me luck! Hopefully they do not die on me again.

Happy holidays!

 I finally got a pic of my Porcellio laevis male!

I obtain one (1) isopod

 A few nights ago I was doing laundry and saw a very large (larger than 1cm) isopod running across my garage! Upon closer inspection it was neither the ubiquitous Armadillidium nor the (less common but hyperabundant in some microhabitats) pruinose Porcellionides. I strongly suspect it is a male Porcellio laevis specimen but have not bothered to identify it yet. Update: it is indeed a male laevis!

I lost my phone again, so photos coming later.

I swear I'm not dead ye- oh wait

News: the inchworm depupated successfully on Nov. 6! It was Chrysodeixis includens. I dumped the moth on someone's Lantana bush shortly after it molted. Interestingly it was prettier than I thought it would be; I didn't realize it was reflective like bronze/silver satin; the sheen is less apparent in photos. I think I did a somewhat good job of capturing the pleasant coloration here though.

The Nyctoporis carinata female adult I sent Hisserdude has recovered from shipping stress and is still alive in a box somewhere in his house. The larvae at my house are doing well in garden soil and eating assorted vegetables happily. They are now large enough to photograph! Some individuals have very dark brown anteriors and others of the same size have pale orange anteriors but all of them are creamy white and puffy on the rest of their body. They also have sparse hair bristles over their bodies but this isn't visible here. Here is a pic, interestingly it is currently the only online photo of one in existence:

They are slower at walking than both Tenebrio and Zophobas and regularly engage in peristaltic contractions when locomoting (T and Z larvae only seem to peristalse when being grabbed or in tight spaces). They also flop with extreme violence if dug up, much more so than T/Z; however once finished flopping they stop moving for a while. They will make no attempt to rebury themselves for several minutes unless the substrate is vibrating, just like some dung scarabs. If the vibration stops they immediately freeze again. Of course once the several minutes have passed they will dig, vibrations or no vibrations. They cannot dig quickly if dug up, but oddly if feeding on vegetables with only their heads sticking out they can retract just as quickly as Z/T can when frightened.

Unfortunately the Cotinis mutabilis both died during shipping.

Nyctoporis arrives!

Hisserdude has successfully acquired my specimen, here are some pretty macro shots he took of it!

An inchworm pupates at me

prepupal larva in finished cocoon

Found this noctuid on my floor on Oct. 24, it ate a tomato leaf that night and started producing a cocoon the next morning. Currently it is a bright green pupa.

larva several hours before cocoon construction

Several bugs vanish from my inventory

Manduca sexta died several days ago. In life it kept drooling and getting leaf sludge on its face/legs when eating, and like a starving mealworm it was suspiciously shortbodied. These are highly unusual symptoms of disease, normally infected specimens begin flopping about uncoordinatedly and vomiting; mine did not show any obvious signs of distress. A few days before it died it lost most of its appetite (it did still eat hours before perishing though) and just stopped moving and eventually turned limp, but without rotting or liquefying. Also unusual. Pretty sure it caught a pathogen in the wild, because it was already short and stout when I first laid my eyes upon it.

The Nyctoporis carinata female was sent to Hisserdude. He should prolly write a blog post soon if it makes it to his house alive.

I'm also currently mailing out my male Cotinis duo.

The only specimens I currently have left are the Nyctoporis larvae, which unlike the adult are too small to be mailed.

I go into caterpillar debt

Last morning I found some Manduca sexta caterpillars on a half-dead tomato bush. "Why not play w them for a while", I thought to myself.

I played w them and dumped three of the four back onto the bush after a while.

The fourth one (which has an unusually large quantity of black stripes by the way) got its horn tip broken during handling and began leaking alarmingly large quantities of hemolymph from the injury site. I blame myself to some degree for this, I kept the caterpillars a bit too close to each other and one of the others probably bit or tore its horn accidentally. Not sure how it happened though, I had a feeling such a thing was going to happen and tried to prevent it before it even started but somehow it happened anyways.

As compensation for the unethics I am keeping it in a jar for a while, where microwasps are guaranteed not to oviposit in it and I can stuff its face with tasty tomato lumps. Although the animal seems to have difficulty sealing the leak (it has continued exuding hemolymph droplets from its horn intermittently throughout yesterday and today, especially when I am handling it during container cleaning), its health has not been significantly affected at all, which is good.

Anyways, here's the captive specimen I guess.

A pretty picture

 I'm not actually a fan of photographing pretty things for its own sake, but many of you seem to enjoy my photography a lot so here's a pic of my brownish C. mutabilis male being fashionable I guess. The less brown one fell straight into the watermelon juice (how can their motor skills be so poor, sheesh) and wouldn't hold still when it crawled out of the sugar puddle.

First N. carinata larva found!

 Need I say more?

Deformed Female presumably dies

The deformed female C. mutabilis specimen ran away a few days ago and hasn't been seen since, I blame my low sanity (and resulting lack of energy) for causing this. It's probably starved to death by now.

Since flightless mutabilis specimens seem to be perpetually sad when not busy feeding/sleeping perhaps it was better off dead anyways [sigh].

I become a teneb nursery

 

My Nyctoporis carinata specimen has been gluing white eggs all over the surface of its garden soil! Unfortunately it is still running around in circles and being stressed for some incomprehensible reason.

AAAAAAAAA

 The N. carinata specimen has increased in desperation and is now running in circles as fast as its broken legs will take it (which is still not that fast) whenever it is awake. I've tried everything I could think of and none of it works.

Not again

 Last night I saw my Nyctoporis carinata specimen repeatedly (but very slowly, since most of its legs are broken) pacing back and forth around a single area near the cage wall and trying to climb it. When I changed its substrate from paper to soil, it began walking in circles around the edge (my container is round) and continued to make climb attempts.

This isn't good. Some of you may recall that the thing I tentatively IDed as Gonocephalum and also most of the Coniontis I tried to keep exhibited the same behavior, and that no one knows why this happens. I hate problems like this, I followed all the protocols for proper tenebrionid care and it still keeps happening. Besides, since the nycto has no desire to hide under objects, we can rule out the "unsuitable hiding areas" possibility I had hypothesized the Coniontis were suffering from.

I'm flattered

 

Thanks for drawing my Cotinis mutabilis males!

Image credits: @binaphobia

Same rufipes appears again

The specimen pictured here and here has appeared yet again, I guess this is its fifth or sixth appearance or something. This is not a very important piece of information but I guess I enjoy seeing the same one appearing every few nights. Also I've still never seen more than one living rufipes specimen at a time this year so it's likely the only adult alive right now.

...But to be honest I'm getting tired of posting it repeatedly, I guess I'll stop.

Cotinis arty post

(note: this is just a mockup; the Domino campaign will continue to be dormant for the foreseeable future)

Extra distinctive I guess

I've seen this specimen at least three times already. I know because it has the same half-broken antenna and missing middle tarsus on its left side as the one pictured in my previous post. Not particularly surprising though, after all they seem very reluctant to leave their host.

Behavioral notes on Diaperis/Nyctoporis

 

I saw a Diaperis rufipes specimen last night (pictured above) and again in the early morning today. While photoing the night specimen it began chewing on my hand; evidently my suspicion that D. rufipes dislikes eating all nonfungal material has been falsified.

I have also found that my captive Nyctoporis carinata specimen becomes increasingly likely to reject handfed food and flinch/recoil from fingers when it is well fed, even when it is still hungry enough to eat non-handfed food. This supports my hypothesis that feeding placation is actually calculated risk-taking, and that the mortality risks of being easily visible to sharp-eyed vertebrates may actually be quite low for some counterintuitive reason; after all I have also repeatedly seen Cotinis and Calosoma become reluctant to hand-feed when well fed but still hungry.

Also, my carinata specimen is prone to sleeping out in the open, not under a shelter like most tenebrionids. I assume that its lumpy dull-colored self allows it to be camouflaged against dirt and reduces the need to hide.

Minor Cotinis news

 

After reading a paper I learned how to sex adult females. Remember how I said I had two males and a mismolted specimen which I suspected was female? Guess what, it is indeed one.

Also I forgot to mention that it lost its elytron after one of the males accidentally ripped it off during copulation. I knew this sort of thing was going to happen, should have separated them sooner. It's still alive and healthy though, and now in a separate container.

I become a teneb hospital

 
I acquired a new Nyctoporis carinata specimen last Saturday! I was hiking around in the forest and finding zero tenebrionids, even in the damper areas near the river. While I was walking home I saw it flailing upside-down on the roadside, with spiderweb in its legs. Evidently it had fallen and couldn't get up, and was dying from heat exhaustion as a result.

Normally I would have disentangled it and put it right side up elsewhere in the forest, but I got too excited and decided to take it home. Normally taking things home tends to be a bad idea, since I have a track record of accidentally performing unethics on captive specimens (I still regret the coccinellid starvation incidents), but this time it wasn't a problem. When I got home I saw that it was twitching its legs and jaws in a very uncoordinated fashion and would have surely died if I left it in the forest. It stopped spasming after the first few hours and feebly chewed a cooked rice grain, which was good. For some reason dying insects seem less likely to survive if they are unwilling to eat. Unfortunately it still could not walk.

It remained unable to walk for the next day or two, and kept awkwardly dragging itself away backwards from its food after feeding sessions of mere minutes or seconds, although its appetite did slowly improve. However, today I opened its jar and was pleased to see it had fully recovered! Some of its legs are permanently broken but it can now walk, and it has eaten a considerable quantity of rice and assorted fruits. It certainly is a joy to work with compared to those awful green scarabs; it shows little fear at being hand-fed and picked up, can detect its food from long distances via antennae (the scarabs only detect food and feed in captivity if they walk into fruit face first, and their facial aim is terrible), doesn't have monomaniacal urges to constantly fly (seeing a flightless Cotinis specimen spend hours a day attempting to go airborne is just painful to watch), and doesn't even play dead or flinch when handled, even though death feigning is one of its main defenses (it lacks defensive scent glands).

I still plan to send it alive to an acquaintance once COVID lockdown ends though; I've read that nyctos tend to be lethargic and kind of boring to watch, and don't think keeping it would be much fun.

Cotinis yogurt test

Recently I read from a paper that they are capable of and willing to ingest soured milk! I tried feeding mine some sweetened yogurt. They fed but without much enthusiasm. Also it didn't cure their desire to fly and relentlessly climb plastic cage walls.

Note that liquid and semiliquid fermented milk products might be very beneficial to adults of many Cetoniinae; the protein may increase their health somewhat.

Diaperis/Cotinis minor updates

7 am specimen

Another sighting of D. rufipes, around 7 am! If I get enough sightings this year before its host's fruits die I'm going to make a graph of its circadian rhythm and population dynamics.

Update: saw one at eleven thirty, it was eating fungus and in the same spot as the 7 am one. I seem to have scared it off by flash photography, because it stopped eating and eventually retreated into a crevice.

Also I assume I saw a rufipes at noon yesterday, but it was deep within a crack so I couldn't see the diagnostic features. I highly doubt it was a different species though as no other things of the same shape really visit the area.




All three C. mutabilis specimens have now begun attempting flight occasionally indoors. Not sure why they started doing so but it's probably of little consequence, as my experiment had already failed long before they began.

Hasty Cotinis mutabilis update

For those of you not up to date on my Cotinis experiment, here is a brief summary of the research!


- Hypothesis: being given access to branches or foliage-like objects to climb may cause captive Cotinis mutabilis to cease their restless flight attempts, which they constantly perform in captivity when not occupied with other things. I used this fake bouquet:

- Experimental candidates: 3 specimens, two male (above) and one mismolted specimen (seemingly female, below). All appear flightless for some reason.

- Analysis: Sample size way too small, so I have marked many conclusions below as tentative. Due to my rapidly diminishing sanity reserves I cannot afford to capture and feed more wild specimens. Will have to get rid of the three ASAP (trying to mail them live to an acquaintance). What did you expect?


- Notable results: Copulation appears to calm male restless wandering urges for a day or so.

All three specimens remained largely unwilling to fly indoors for some reason and could be allowed to freerange for very extensive periods on a fake plant (though would eventually fall off).

However, they would attempt flight (unsuccessfully) if taken outside and exposed to the sun, even though two of the three had normal-looking hindwings. Note that other Cotinis were able to lift off successfully indoors, so the cooler temps inside are not preventing flight. Fake foliage may have some degree of calming effect on Cotinis, as specimens were seen voluntarily motionless ("involuntary" is when they freeze in alarm upon sensing suspicious vibrations) on it at daytime occasionally.

Note that specimens sometimes become severely frightened by other specimens and may freeze, abandon food, or defecate in alarm; evidently they have difficulty distinguishing between conspecifics and danger.

Nevertheless, specimens often became restless and wandered violently when no longer hungry; evidently the fake foliage could not calm their restlessness fully.

Specimens also accept fake foliage as sleeping areas and will remain overnight on their perches. They prefer it more than damp paper towels, and refuse to sleep if in damp towels. They accept dried towels though; this finding supports earlier findings from previous years and I am fairly confident that Cotinis mutabilis consistently hate damp paper towels as beds. Oddly, these three also hated sleeping underground in damp soil and would dig for hours after sundown but quickly slept once given a perch.

I was too hasty in assuming all C males readily mated w person fingers when calm. These two haven't, despite extensive handling.

Second Diaperis sighting!

In the afternoon shade. Ovipositing apparently. 6:43 to 6:48, it fled back into a crevice at 48 cause I breathed too hard on it. I hate being a large conspicuous bumbling mammal so much.

Update: third appearance, possibly same individual, at 7:45 dusk. It then semi-immediately vanished.

Diaperis rufipes, 2020 season

The D. rufipes hostfungus had made a tiny crustlike fruiting body a few months ago this summer, but it promptly died. However now it is pumping out a properly shaped fruit, much to my surprise. I thought it was going to skip the large 3D fruits this year! I will be continuously watching it to collect data on the biology of rufipes.

Unfortunately as with previous years the only other dominant visitor to the fungus is a certain nondescript brown fly that seems to be a lauxaniid, with the rest being a very few species of boring generalist earwigs, gnats, slugs, etc.

Last night I spotted my first living rufipes adult and took it in for some photos. Unsurprisingly my idiot phone AI decided to mess with me again, even under bright light it insisted the red stripes were black and refused to focus despite being perfectly capable of doing so, so I'm not going to post most of those pics here.

However I have captured a single pic of it with flared wings (and thus proved it isn't flightless) and visible red, and this is undoubtedly the only photograph of it doing so in existence!

Like I said previously, it is (like most other longwinged tenebrionids) extremely unwilling to fly and cannot be induced to do so unless malnourished and attempting dispersal, so instead I turned it upside down and photographed it when it spread its elytra to right itself.

By the way the flared wings pic doesn't show its deep ruby red color perfectly so here's a semiblurry shot of it shortly after being placed back on its host.

Physciella chloantha is no longer back!

I didn't kill them. The vertebrates I am stuck with kept getting vertebrate germs everywhere and I had to abandon the project for now. EDIT: Also, I forgot to mention this, but all lichens Hazel sent me are now either dead or in permanent dry storage because of the above mentioned problems with captive vertebrates. I guess the Florida Lichens Experiment was a fail.

Physciella chloantha is back!

Now that I have had a better understanding of lichen supersaturation depression and spray bottles, I expect the chances of success to be much higher! Hopefully the specimens actually decide to actually grow this time.

I fail to culture slimes again

I have been kidnapping slimes (probably Fuligo septica, say the slime people) off a neighbor's lawn! It was in vain though, chunks removed from the pictured specimen largely did not move and also refused to feed.

It seems I had collected them too late in the ripening sequence to reverse the fruiting process.

Pomacea is dead

Pomacea got killed a few months earlier. After finding myself in a dilemma involving perpetual extreme exhaustion and suboptimal weather conditions I was unable to change its water in time and thus poisoned it to death.

I kind of saw it coming (my low sanity and the resulting tiredness has caused significant problems in the past), but it had the nerve to be dead right when I was attempting to mail it out to someone with more aquarium freespace than myself.

Toxomerus marginatus, slow motion

Two males doing... something?

Female flies away.

Other hoppers do it too

(note dandelion scrap in mouth)

Remember all the Scudderia mexicana handfeeding? Guess what, even more severe nervous wrecks like Schistocerca nitens can also be picked up and given snacks too! This specimen had highly idiosyncratic eating habits very unlike those of the tettigoniids (which strongly prefer high-energy items like sugar and pollen). It took a few bites out of lawn grasses (never seen any other polyphagous grazing invert eat lawn!) and white clover foliage intermittently while wandering; it refused to eat white clover flowers and had minimal interest in wet raisin, and after some persuading and hesitation decided to violently ingest an entire dandelion inflorescence. It then palpated and possibly chewed a second dandy but was evidently not interested, and later flew off.

Despite the refusal of dandy two, no alarm behaviors were induced upon offering, so here is a video demonstrating proper etiquette when feeding easily frightened Orthoptera! Note that S. mexicana and Phaneroptera nana appear to be only frightened by sudden tactile stimuli, while most S. nitens specimens (not this one of course) will panic when they see close-range abrupt movements.

One (1) luck obtained!

Unfortunately, my current lawn's syrphid biodiversity consists almost exclusively of Toxomerus marginatus, which float around in sparse clouds near tasty grass inflorescences and dandelions. Fortunately, last Saturday I photographed a rare aberrant marginatus specimen! If you view the fullsized image you may notice that its tail is crooked and has a lopsided splotch.

April Fool's 2020

I can't wait to FINALLY key all my Coniontis to species!

I sure am pleased with myself for duping two bugguide editors in a row!

As always, click to zoom!

Now grape-flavored!

I decided to acetone the red lichens today, because a greenbottle had been walking around and possibly on them.

As expected, the red pigment (probably chiodectonic acid, but since the taxonomy is unclear I can't be sure) rapidly dissolved, eventually causing the big thallus to turn brownish green and the smaller fragments to be completely white. If I recall correctly the white compounds do not dissolve in acetone, and since the big one had less of them it would explain the difference.

Then the big thallus (not the others) turned purple. I can only hope it wasn't killed by the chemical reaction. Edit: even violent rinsing failed to remove the purple; I threw them out.

Spring minor updates

Brown Male sure enjoys its sunbaths

- Pomacea diffusa specimen is now feeding actively again!

- The green discoloration previously mentioned on red mystery Herpothallon appears to be yellow now; whether this is caused by improper misting, sunburn, or conditions outside my control is unclear. Red regions also appear to be fading in color. A Candelaria(?) thallus also appears to be yellowing for the wrong reasons; during an unexpected artificial-shade failure it presumably became sunburned too (and since it was acetone rinsed its natural bright yellow sunscreen was washed off, so presumably the new yellow is from moribund algae). The blackish jelly lichen displays no apparent ill health though, even though such things are supposed to throw violent tantrums during air pollution. In any case, since all red mystery thalli survived for a suspiciously long period of time under extreme hydration frequency before showing signs of thallus damage, and since some reds still appear healthy, I suspect that the experiment is not a failure yet. Some of the mosses on the largest red's wood block are still green and seemingly fine.

- After several embarrassing incidents the brown Scudderia mexicana male has lost its semi-tameness but fortunately I compensated it with some extra desserts. I have continued failing miserably at filming courtship behavior due to a lack of receptive females, and will not be watching the male regularly any longer.

Herpothallon rubrocinctum(?) update

All rubrocinctum(?) samples are evidently not dead; some of the true mosses they came with have withered but others are perfectly fine. Samples do not appear to have grown a single millimeter. There is an unusually green discoloration near the side of the thallus. The small thallus fragment shown in the previous post has become entirely white except for its red regions; others remain pale blue-green (and at least one of the other small fragments have yellowed slightly, presumably from an accidental sunburn). I have noticed that lichens on small wood chunks are hard to water properly, since they easily become too flooded and then dry out with equal speed.

More fun misadventures with Scudderia

brown male eats pollen with a green female

Recently I have found that Scudderia mexicana habituates to tactile stimulation during strong winds; it fails to react to even severe battering by nearby swaying leaves and likewise fails to react when scooped up in the hand:

same female as above

Interestingly today I have also found that even during nonwindy days it is possible to hold them, as long as pollensticks are provided as bribery (and sudden movements are avoided). Several reports exist of captive-raised Scudderia spp. becoming permanently fearless; I encourage keepers of other long-lived Tettigoniidae to experiment with desensitization training too. Unfortunately Phaneroptera nana does not currently seem to be active in my area for some reason, so I was unable to test my ideas on it.


S. mexicana is, as previously mentioned, a highly sedentary animal when sufficiently satiated (even during the night); I have recently been playing with a brown and slightly bowlegged (harmless mismolt?) male, which currently seems to shuttle between two semiclearly defined perches in my front yard every large handful of hours. I have seen the same specimen in the distant past, so evidently the sunny CA weather has allowed it a long life.

As with other specimens, it is quite incompetent at selecting camouflaged locations and even more incompetent at holding onto food detached from its host plant:

Fortunately all specimens somehow apparently suffer little mortality risk even when sitting on weirdly colored succulents for days or eating the bright pink/yellow pollensticks I have provided, even though hummingbirds and small brown/yellow birds regularly fly around the area.


My current attempts at obtaining a receptive female for it and documenting courtship are quite unsuccessful;

(note the exposing of dorsal abdomen by the male)

In any case, it is pleasant to be able to interact with a bunch of wild hoppers without inducing stress! Updates soon, if I succeed in courtship documentation.

Possibly exciting lichen update

so pale

I have just noticed that all watered samples of the thing-which-appears-to-be-Herpothallon-rubrocinctum have turned white to some degree, some after only a couple of hydration days! Appearances strongly suggest that this is not algal bleaching but in fact rapid sunscreen production by the fungus. Hopefully this means that I will soon see some growth!

(unfortunately, due to problems involving atranorin, the natural unidentifiability of drab microlichens, and my shortage of sterilized delicups a large portion of my new thalli are still in storage; furthermore several days ago one of the tiny green foliicolous dots bleached to apparent death seconds after a watering event, presumably because I accidentally snapped it in half)

More excellent lichens

tasty dots (with gray cream)!

Here are some other lichens Hazel sent me; since many lichens need microscopy and chemtests for ID, I will write detailed analyses on them later. As always, click to zoom!

foliicolous party mix

apparently a jelly lichen

the worm-shaped lirellae(?) are quite pleasant

pale mint when wet (otherwise white)

same colorchange behavior as the other one

A brief intermission

The Bagrada hilaris female had been its usual self during the first several days of January, though refusing to stay planted on its food after eagerly proboscising it; another few days later it was deader than a bag of cricket flour.

I am quite appalled, since I suspect that there may have been a problem with hostplant quality; many specialist oligophagous herbivores are prone to mysterious tantrums if they smell that a particular host is excessively well-defended or lacking in nutrition. I imagine it could have been easily averted by providing a wider selection of different brassicaceans to it each day, since this has worked well in the past when it probed and rejected one leaf or floret. Unfortunately, my now-constant lack of sanity (and thus energy) had been causing some problems with plan implementation and furthermore I could not have released the poor hemipteran anyways; why are brassicacean weeds always rare when you really need them? I am tired of detecting potential ethical disasters and consistently failing to avert them despite frantic efforts.

In any case r-strategists are built for high mortality rates anyways; I suppose I can tentatively hope that whatever I did to it is less unpleasant than its natural fate...? After all despite the frequent broccoli shortages I did fish it out of the swimming pool and allow it to live several months longer than wild specimens (which I presume are literally annoyed to death by heapfuls of desperate males on a regular basis). Those broccoli shortages were still awfully long, though.





Fortunately the Pomacea diffusa specimen is still doing quite well, though it hasn't stopped fasting yet.

New Year's "fireworks"

Introduction

Unfortunately, my recent research strongly seems to imply that Physciella chloantha can only grow several millimeters each year even under extremely frequent hydration; fortunately, since "adult" chloantha thalli are naturally rather small this means that under such a growth rate there will in fact be a significant proportional increase in their size after several years. Unfortunately, it is still a rather slow growth rate, although at least it is faster than that of many non-synanthropic lichens.

Fortunately, some lichens still grow much faster than chloantha. These include the "obligately" foliicolous ephemerals (more on that later), but also some larger-bodied types such as Peltigera and Herpothallon (sidenote: Peltigera is one of the few lichens that have successfully been grown as a non-axenic whole thallus indoors; Moss Grower's Handbook reports that it pops up occasionally in cultivated moss setups as a very minor pest).


Death and tax(onomi)es

Hazel of Hazel's Science Things has been generous enough to supply me with a number of lichens freshly imported from Florida and Ohio, and among the most notable is the red and mint-green thing pictured above and below (interestingly it stays green even when dry):

the pointy things are true mosses

This is, um, er..., perhaps a specimen of Herpothallon rubrocinctum. "My" reference book Lichens of North America states that H. rubrocinctum is completely unmistakeable; I am not sure whether it means "no other species with identical appearance exists in NA" though. Furthermore, the cryptogam specialist I had been sending my specimens to lost all confidence in redstriped Herpothallon ID after I found a dichotomous key and an unrelated image implying that H. globosum was red and stripy; another lichen person the first one called in was similarly terrified.

I am currently waiting for a third opinion on the matter.


Herpothallon rubrocinctum: an ecological overview

Available evidence gives me the strong impression that any possibly-confusable species are only other Herpothallon; thus, they have some probability of being ecologically similar.

Information on rubrocinctum habitat appears to be surprisingly sparse in the scientific research literature; it seems to be one of the poster children of lichenworld, presumably due to its bright coloration, and is frequently mentioned on nature sites targeting non-researchers. Other lichenized members of the Arthoniaceae are normally drab in color, barely recognizable as lichens or even live organisms to the untrained eye, and receive essentially no attention from anyone at all; they appear to be equivalent to the tiny brown beetles and parasitoid wasps which tormented entomologists mention using phrases like "hostplant unknown" and "genus revision desperately needed; multiple undescribed cryptic spp. present". Ironically, I do not perceive rubrocinctum as beautiful in coloration; since color-based attractiveness seems to be controlled by modifiable instincts (perhaps the fruit-seeking ones? I'm not a psychologist) and is apparently not an inherent/objective property of objects, I appear to have accidentally trained my subconscious mind to associate only muted color palettes with prettiness. Spending massive quantities of time looking at drab tenebrionid/carabid beetles has some bizarre side effects, I guess! (Not that I care either way, since I am mostly just interested in extracting science from the thalli.)

After a brute-force scan of every rubrocinctum paper in existence(!) on Google Scholar, I have assembled a tentative map of its preferences:

- Colonized substrate known to include a wide variety of native and non-native bark/mosses (the pictured thallus is in fact smothering the mosses to death), but also rarely rock and angiosperm leaves; I imagine it is theoretically capable of colonizing plastic, like many other foliicolous lichens. (NOTE: I have previously suggested that Physciella chloantha may also be plastic-colonizing due to its ability to grow on top of mosses; however, since I have never seen reports of it growing on angiosperm leaves or plastic in the wild, and it seems intolerant of extreme smoothness, if it can grow on plastic special conditions are likely needed to help it hydrate and attach properly.)

- It is widespread throughout the humid tropics, although it may rarely also occur in the dry zones of such areas; one paper reported it was present even on several environmentally degraded farmland areas. Another reported that it was extremely water-repellent, likely to prevent drowning during heavy rains. An illustration within mentioned that the exposed thallus surface is superhydrophobic; conversely, the side in contact with the bark is riddled with a complex network of channels to collect and rapidly drain water. My own observations confirm the repellence; specimens appear to dry out quite quickly even compared to other lichens despite thorough spraying. Finally, a third paper mentions that Floridian specimens it studied had constant 24-hr access to water except for a few hours at noon; I will try to keep my specimens constantly sprayed whenever the sun is active (lichens can't photosynthesize in darkness anyways, so inducing nighttime dormancy should probably save energy).

- A few papers mention that it has been found on acid bark, although I could not find if it prefers acidity or merely tolerates it; I did not see any reports mentioning its presence on neutral or calcareous substrates. Hazel reports that the hostplant of the ones sent to me is Quercus (oak), which is indeed acidic unless it has been calcified by aerial dusts. To be safe I will be watering it and all the other Florida lichens (the local region apparently has acidic rain) with distilled mineral-free water; if what a paper told me about bark pH is correct, then the bark acids will acidify neutral water applied to it.


Unrelated bonus paper

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231794852_A_new_species_of_Arthonia_is_a_pest_in_an_orchid_nursery

As mentioned above, many Arthonia (including this one) are nondescript mold-like films. Do note that in the back it mentions several other lichens naturally occurring or successfully cultivated in greenhouses.