- Church dodder is huge now and flowering. I also got myself the small presumably-annual species from Santa Fe Dam. Unfortunately my personal subinclusa culture has fizzled out because the plants were too dumb to grow downwards, and I'm trying to reestablish it from cuttings of the bit I put into the church.
- Grabbed myself a Loensia maculosa specimen. Call it maladaptive coping mechanisms, because honestly non-indoors Psocodea consistently seem to be among the most painful of the detritivore taxa to feed (it would not eat a lot of things tenebrionids, isopods, etc. love). I have it in a dry container full of dead leaves/petals smeared with yeast (it doesn't seem to require drinking water or even juicy food and apparently is one of those species that magically hydrates itself out of thin air), and it did eat the yeast, but seemingly refuses to eat anything else. I know L. maculosa is a facultative synanthrope (specimens have even been recorded from bark of Eucalyptus) and thus of relatively little conservation value, but in this day and age, well, one never knows.* I collected mine from native plant wilderness though, maybe the wilderness genotypes are different from the urban ones? Something something intraspecific invasive genotypes something something? Also I threw in a probable Blaste oregona nymph (suburban origin, not from native vegetation stand) in with it a few minutes ago on a whim. This seemed to go poorly so I re-released the nymph.
*I keep hearing about potential declines of synanthropic birds and native semiweedy flora.
- At least one of the macrosternodesmids? is still alive and eating. Now that the weird horrible mold has left their enclosure and the dirt actually smells nice I've dared to put in dead leaves more generously, and the Hibiscus ones are being eaten enthusiastically.
- F2 generation of haplodesmids? produced, although my attempts to delete excess eggs have prevented a population explosion. Nevertheless some of the F1s apparently died for some reason and I feel bad about it (although I still have way too many of the species for my and their own good).
- Sent some more misc. insects to acquaintance for potential conservation-rearing.
- Asterella californica project severely stalled due to rains and resulting mudslide and resulting forest closure, the ones in my culture are doing okay tho. The Sphaerocarpos in the same cup suffered a huge dieoff as I kept the dirt slightly too dry (was trying to prevent soil algae), but I still have some balloonworts alive in another cup.
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