Hisserdude reports that the N. carinata female I sent him a few months ago finally succumbed to age.
My own N. carinata larvae continue to occasionally surface and pace despite my providing of buried carrots. They seem not to like carrots. I guess I'll have to up the cornflake rations? I also recently cleaned their cage to remove mold. I found 21 N. larvae, zero springtails, zero mites, and zero sciarid maggots; evidently the microarthropods had all died and I won't have to worry about mite outbreaks.
Anyways, I took this pic and then released it in my front yard because it seemed stressed in captivity (it spent a worryingly large portion of its time in my cage aboveground, where it ran in panicked circles day and night). I assume the dirt in its cage was unsuitable for some reason. Fortunately it seems healthy now so it should likely survive in the urban wilds.
I was also wryly amused to find its missing sixth leg floating in the swimming pool today. For some reason insects occasionally lose limbs when drowning; perhaps surface tension twists the legs into unnatural postures and thus sprains enough muscles to amputate them.
I fed the leg to a captive hen. The hen was pleased.
EDIT: US Stenopelmatus are now all Ammopelmatus! Taxonomy sure changes fast!
Today I have acquired a Stenopelmatus specimen from my swimming pool! It has only five legs and seems somewhat unhealthy so I guess I am keeping it for a while. I released my Porcellio laevis male into the front yard to make room. The isopod was too secretive to be visible anyways, and invisible specimens always make me a bit nervous.
So far the cricket has chewed up an algal wafer and scattered crumbs everywhere. I will have to clean up the mess soon. It also vibrated, which means it is likely an adult (nymphs may sometimes vibrate too).
The Physciella samples were once again ruined, though through no fault of my own. Why are physics and society hellbent on killing me to death?
Also, two days ago I noticed a Nyctoporis carinata larva running in circles around the surface, and it was emaciated-looking (I have also seen multiple thin but non-surfacing larvae in the distant past and amped up the cornflake rations in hopes of fattening them; they didn't help, and were not eaten very much). The surfaced larva made some efforts to chew a cabbage leaf and then reburrowed after a number of minutes of gnawing. I strongly suspect that nyctopores, unlike many commonly kept Tenebrionidae, have larvae that are so timid that they do not usually surface for food unless starving. And since the garden soil my larvae are in is not very nutritious, presumably they could not gain adequate nutrition when away from the surface. I buried a mushroom stem in the dirt in hopes of increasing their food intake and will add some underground carrots later.
