Scolops threw a fit too

 I have moved it to a willow in hopes it is more palatable than Croton.

Dictyssa and Xerophloea are still feeding well on Cuscuta and Croton respectively.

Found weird hoppers from Santa Fe Dam today

 

Santa Fe Dam. All on Croton californicus. Attempting to rear these 4 conservation. Note that despite all being camouflage-colored C. californicus has none of these textures on its body. They must get away with the poor camouflage somehow.

I've a C. californicus in a pot btw.

Update: they're respectively Scolops californicus (well, probably), Dictyssa obliqua, Xerophloea peltata. Feeding on C. californicus confirmed for the first, and probably for the third, judging by the latter's behavior. The dicty threw a fit after some hours (possibly from noxious phytochemistry increasing from my not having watered the host enough in the past, even though it was well watered at the time I offered it) but I offered it a bit of Cuscuta subinclusa and it fed on that.

Scolops californicus and Dictyssa obliqua are endemics, while Xerophloea peltata is more widespread and reported to be a minor pest of economic plants, but all 3 may be of some conservation value in my area due to their seemingly tight association with soft chaparral, a habitat type that is disproportionately destroyed in my area (unlike the very different-looking hard chaparral). Of course, being so understudied, no one actually knows exactly how threatened or not they are, so I'm going off educated guesses and all that.

C. sanguinicollis breeding project now cancelled

I can't seem to keep them placated for more than a few hours a day. Perhaps my movements around the room scare them (although they don't fly away immediately when I'm near them, and sometimes don't react at all), or perhaps they endogenously attempt to fly even when all their physical needs are met.

Anyways, I released the female, euthanized the pupa (it metamorphosed so poorly it could not walk after eclosion), and am going to release my new female soon. The last of the 4 individuals is still a larva and shows no intent to pupate.

Rest of my life's been uneventful. Dodders and Calasterella and aridland wildflowers are doing basically nothing worth my time to mention. Still depressed to death, only respite is the too-infrequent Ultraviolet Grasslands games.

Oh, and that weird hairy mystery plant from the China trip is probably some sort of Draba.

Addendum to prev post

The sanguinicollis female appears to operate according to the following protocol when not frightened by handling:

- If no or only small patches of direct sunlight are visible anywhere, remain calm/lethargic on host.

- If direct sunlight is shining on body, bask and become slightly more active, but nevertheless remain calm/lethargic on host.

- If no direct sunlight is visible within the enclosure but large quantities are visible outside the window, attempt to fly towards window and become restless.

Keeping the curtains closed until the sun moves into a position where it's directly shining on the beetle seems to keep the animal calm throughout the entirety of the day.

Cryptocephalus sanguinicollis success

One specimen is now adult (a female), with another freshly changed into a pupa. Perhaps the acquaintance I enlisted to care for them during China did something right that I didn't (more consistent/stable humidity?) that made the larvae eat more regularly, or perhaps their endogenous clocks simply told them they had to metamorphose.

Said acquaintance's roommate was a little shit who was grabbing and inspecting my specimens without his permission and accidentally cracked open the latter larva's fecal case shortly before it pupated, but I suspect the pupa will survive anyway. I'm keeping it very lightly damp to mimic the humidity conditions presumably experienced inside a case.

Unfortunately, as you can see here the pronotum and wings are a bit misshapen, and more concerningly it only seems to have 3 legs (or, worse, maybe it has 6 legs but 3 are still larviform, a thing that's known to happen during severe pupal molting disruptions sometimes). I swear to God I'll give that roommate the beating up of his life if I ever meet him in person. Even my acquaintance never liked him.

Also, my single adult's behaving normally. As I had hypothesized, tricking it into thinking there was no ceiling helped. Long story short I got one of those giant mesh pop-up cages, put a hostplant (Rubus) in in a way that the leaves weren't touching the walls/ceiling, and put the beetle on the plant. It usually flew away in alarm from being handled (and, being too attracted to light, was psychologically unable to fly/walk back to the host once on the cage walls/ceiling), but sometimes it would get hungry enough to start eating as it was climbing up to the top to prepare for its escape flight and forget it was scared, and (more rarely) it would initiate the escape flight and bounce off the wall in just the right way to end up back on the host by accident. In both of these cases it would calm down and remain on the host (however escape flights that were only a cm or two long did not placate it when they ended on a leaf, probably because they were not long enough to count as a "successful escape" to its instincts).

The adult seems not to like eating Salix lasiolepis for some reason (but will calm down and remain on it anyway when I use the above technique), which is why I switched to Rubus. Ideally I would've used Salvia apiana or Acmispon glaber as those seem to be preferred wild hosts.




Edit: it got mad at being in the shade (because my house only gets direct sunlight in the mid to late afternoon) and left its host. I re-placated it, but this animal is going to be one hell of a pain to keep satisfied. Don't want to put its cage outdoors which might kill it from overheating. But then again, I've seen wild specimens making no attempt to seek shade at temperatures physically painful to myself, and I'm pretty heat-tolerant.

I am no longer in China

I do intend to add some additional commentary below later though.