Caught 1 more D. obliqua (pictured above) yesterday (new total: 2), both specimens still feeding well on dodder.
Caught a pale green morph of what appears to be another X. peltata on the same excursion, both specimens motionless and apparently feeding well on Croton.
Caught weird pinstriped Croton associate weevil on the same excursion, seems to be doing well in the enclosure with the hoppers.
Scolops is not fleeing the hosts but kept shifting around between spots
on the willow, and is now of its own volition on the Croton again
(unclear if this is male matesearching or if something's still subtly
wrong with the host hydration status or whatever it is); I did not find any additional specimens, so it has no mate.
Also of note is that I've noticed D. obliqua will lower their wings when frightened, that when only one of the two wings is raised it seems to be consistently the left one, as is the tendency among Elicini (side effect of brain lateralization?), and that voluntary (as opposed to alarm-induced) locomotion is at least sometimes accompanied by slow, monotonous up-and-down wing flapping movements reminiscent of tephritid wiggling. While I assume the wings mimic chewed holes in foliage, it is clear that breaking up the animal's outline can't be the reason (or at least the only reason) they're held raised, or else why would frightened animals lower them?
Tephritids use their wings as social signals but I've not seen my two dictys socially interacting so far (the wing-flapping observation occurred before I caught individual #2). Like the other hemipterans currently in my care they spend most of their time sitting still, as one might expect from an animal adapted to a low-nutrition diet. As I suspect they are male and female I might try and prod them into standing next to each other to see if they're interested in mating.
Update: prodded them into chemosensory and visual contact with each other. No detectable response.
