In one of those depression moods again (I say "again" as if I had ever stopped being sad), but here's the important stuff:
- Attempting to rear Pachybrachis bivittatus with an acquaintance (pic credits his). He reports they don't do the obnoxious "continuously try to escape via ceiling" thing. Also, he's discovered the adult not only eats willows but will also reluctantly consume Baccharis. New host record. Also threw in some hemipteran hoppers in his rearing jar.
- He's also trying to rear a native-looking Anthonomus I found.
- Turns out Closterocoris amoenus (I have confirmed them as such due to having reared to adult) and Dictyobia were getting restless and stressed due to host plant phytochemical reasons (I did a little controlled-variable experiment and ruled out overheating, lack of leaflitter shelter to hide in, sleeve interfering w sap flow, etc.) Evidently some hosts are simply unsuitable even when other identical-looking ones are not. The adults I reared seemed to have molted more from their stored calories than any new nutrition gained while sleeved on my host at home, although they did feed with reluctance on the latter (and somewhat less reluctantly on supplemental honeyed cashews I offered). If you really want to see pics of them go stalk my Bugguide. In any case, I will not be attempting to rear any more hemipterans that show this sort of severe host-intraspecific pickiness for now. I already have enough blood on my hands.
- The adult Cryptocephalus may have been awful captives, but they did leave some egg capsules behind if I didn't mention that before. They look similar to those made by other members of the genus. None have hatched as far as I can tell.
- Threw some more gray Spastonyx? into Plymouth a few days ago. Several if not all have survived till today.
By the way, if you're a biohistorian from the future and are reading all this to figure out whether some distributional anomalies were my doing, rest assured that I am extremely cautious not to forget to mention any insects I've relocated to non-captive habitats (I may be sloppy with the tags these days but not the actual post documentation). By the other way, it seems that fasciatus-morphospecies Oncopeltus wildtypes experience low mortality on a diet of honeyed cashews and Asclepias curassavica buds/flowers/leaves when no fruits/seeds are available (as opposed to reports in the literature of high mortality when offered only sunflower seeds/cashew and water, or only vegetative/floral milkweed parts but nothing else).
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