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.