Anyways, I found Pachybrachis hepaticus in the swimming pool on Valentine's, which is pretty weird, as they're not normally known to emerge so early (only 2 record on iNat, both from Mexico, and none on Bugguide). Happened straight after the unusually bad CA drought was ended by abrupt rains too.
Threw it in a bag with some lettuce, which it did eat, but every time I allowed it to bask in even mild sun it got restless (it seemed to be male and was presumably mateseeking) so I released it. Was always calm in the shade though, maybe it's like those butterflies/wasps that crave direct sunlight and go inert on overcast days. Haven't seen any other Cryptocephalinae emerge this year yet, they seem to only really get going in mid to late spring (have I told you I'm on a cryptocephaline conservation investigation? I'm too tired/depressed to reread my old posts), but the fact that even a widespread taxon like hepat seems like it might be getting phenology shifts from climate change weather is concerning. I keep seeing research papers talking about how widespreadness and synanthropy don't necessarily protect insect species from conservational danger in this day and age, and they weren't just talking about that one extinct locust either.
I can't be bothered to give my usual round of generic updates because they're boring as shit anyways but the gist is that everything is going as usual for most of my specimens and that the Sphaerocarpos died again. In other news I've continuing to grow tentacles everywhere into the local native plant and gardening and ento and museum-institution groups, largely in hope of gaining backdoor access to maybe a fancy science machine to finally investigate those super cool complex ecological dynamics I've been craving. No luck on the complex dynamics there yet, though I did persuade one of the gardening collectives to leave some unmulched spots for the burrowing bees and the more mulch-hating sorts of native flora.
Also, going to post a short story I wrote later. I'm too tired to do it right now.
