bluglgh

The fat wireworm from a while ago pupated and matured while I wasn't looking. I split open the wood chunk to check up on it and saw an Athous axillaris adult. Gonna throw it in with the Elater. Probably not going to attempt to breed A. axillaris for various reasons, including my strong suspicion that Athous larvae require more animal protein than I have patience for.

All Lystridea dead despite my best efforts. Probably not going to try and catch any more this year.

Bought a bunch of generic nativeish plants from California Botanic Garden to feed the dictys, unsurprisingly they were infested with various bugs and microbes. Sigh. At least my rescued skirt tetras enjoyed eating the aphids.

Intend to throw Hoplomachidea back to its habitat so I can concentrate on pest control (see above). Maybe it will have injected eggs into one of my plants by then. Some females of that species seem able to fly (most if not all males seem flighted) and I'd rather concentrate on obligately flightless bugs. Still, my intuitive guess is that they're not as insensitive to anthropogenic harm as some wing-dimorphic bugs.

Current inventory (or, more accurately, current inventory that I care to mention):

Dictyobia cf. semivitrea, many
cf. Dyctidea intermedia?, x4 I think?
Tiaja, x1 (the other one died from an indirectly aphid related incident)
cf. Uroleucon (pictured above), nativelooking aphids from a wild alate that flew to my Baccharis salicifolia one day

Elater lecontei, x1 (is it even a fertilized female?)
Athous axillaris, x1

Eleodes littoralis, x2
Phloeodes diabolicus, x1
Disabled Eleodes acuticauda, x1 (it's still alive after all this time)!

Calasterella californica, x1
Croton californicus, x3
Cuscuta subinclusa
New CalBG plants (mostly Encelia californica)
Unidentified leafy liverworts (not new, it's the ones I've posted about)
Various other things I don't care to mention




There hasn't been anything of interest to say these years (indeed, I would say most of my life has been miserable and bland) but I swear I'm an interesting person! I swear!!!