A brief intermission

The Bagrada hilaris female had been its usual self during the first several days of January, though refusing to stay planted on its food after eagerly proboscising it; another few days later it was deader than a bag of cricket flour.

I am quite appalled, since I suspect that there may have been a problem with hostplant quality; many specialist oligophagous herbivores are prone to mysterious tantrums if they smell that a particular host is excessively well-defended or lacking in nutrition. I imagine it could have been easily averted by providing a wider selection of different brassicaceans to it each day, since this has worked well in the past when it probed and rejected one leaf or floret. Unfortunately, my now-constant lack of sanity (and thus energy) had been causing some problems with plan implementation and furthermore I could not have released the poor hemipteran anyways; why are brassicacean weeds always rare when you really need them? I am tired of detecting potential ethical disasters and consistently failing to avert them despite frantic efforts.

In any case r-strategists are built for high mortality rates anyways; I suppose I can tentatively hope that whatever I did to it is less unpleasant than its natural fate...? After all despite the frequent broccoli shortages I did fish it out of the swimming pool and allow it to live several months longer than wild specimens (which I presume are literally annoyed to death by heapfuls of desperate males on a regular basis). Those broccoli shortages were still awfully long, though.





Fortunately the Pomacea diffusa specimen is still doing quite well, though it hasn't stopped fasting yet.

Holiday update

zzzzzzzzz

The Bagrada hilaris female has now spent more than two months in captivity! Outdoors it would almost certainly have been dead of age by now. Despite the tarsus loss (and another tarsus ceasing to function, though still physically attached) it is nevertheless quite vigorous when warm. It has, however, suddenly ceased to move on several occasions while halfway in the act of scrubbing its legs (see pic); said legs then dangle awkwardly in the air for considerable periods before it stands up normally again. I have never seen anything even vaguely similar in an arthropod; only Cotinis mutabilis comes close (feeding mutabilis always fall asleep on top of their meals sooner or later; if gently tapped they may slowly lick a few times before continuing to sleep). I speculate that the hemipteran may simply be too cold and unable to perform any non-feeding behavior without becoming metabolically sedated by the temperature. In any case, its newfound inability to climb walls has greatly increased the ease of maintenance, since the jar lid is now permanently off and thus discourages mold growth.

The Pomacea diffusa specimen has survived temperatures slightly below 65F° and continues to survive. It shows little interest in hiding or investigating the plastic plant I put in its jar for psychological enrichment purposes; it has also ceased to feed entirely or almost entirely, having evidently entered full-power overwintering mode. I may offer it a cave; perhaps it will be deemed more suitable than the counterfeit angiosperm?

Introducing Pomacea! (also, small Bagrada update)

This is my Pomacea diffusa specimen! The store labeled it as "bridgesii", which is known to be an incorrect ID. I've run it through a key and it has the characteristic 90-degree-ish shell suture.

I involuntarily acquired the watersnail last month after an unfortunate series of events involving an irresponsible buyer and subsequent month-long fasting session for it. So far, its physical health appears to have improved since I began rehabilitation efforts; a crackly pale growth ring (presumably from the fasting period) I saw on it has been followed by some more normal-looking deposits of shell. However, it appears to have become somewhat dormant in the current cold weather; it refuses to ingest whole vegetables and will sporadically eat somewhat large quantities of algal wafer (which contain few algae and lots of green food coloring + starch). This also makes it quite a boring specimen, as it spends all its time sleeping, feeding, or travelling aimlessly. I doubt it will become less boring during the spring though, except for sleeping less and eating more.

I am rather concerned for its future safety and psychological health, though. While outdoor air temperatures here never get cold enough to kill all the cold-intolerant bugs, they are cold enough to induce in me constant sneezing (and are also below the reported thermal tolerances of diffusa). The situation indoors is of course somewhat better, but in the past it has nearly approached below 65 deg Fahrenheit (the danger zone). My deceased flightless Cotinis mutabilis male (rest in peace) was not harmed by them, but water is usually colder than the surrounding air. I am also stuck with a relatively small jar for housing it, since my juvenile koi specimens would likely harass or outcompete it to death if I threw it in their tank; this means there are no dark hiding areas for it. I am not sure if Pomacea absolutely require hiding areas to prevent stress, like carabids/tenebrionids, but it often drops to the bottom of its jar (a defensive maneuver) if I turn on excessively bright lights at night.

The Bagrada hilaris female (which is just as boring despite its large appetite) just lost a tarsus, by the way. I suspect I may have pinned its leg under the lid, but my memories only recall having said leg near said lid. In any case I have provided it with a dead leaf to sit on, since it is no longer capable of walking up plastic walls and cannot reach vertical sleeping areas, which it prefers.

Bagrada hilaris drinks the last of my defrosted broccoli

Can you believe it singlehandedly exhausted my entire supply of stored brassicaceans in just a month?

Fun misadventures with the Brassicaceae

In addition to the four caterpillars mentioned previously and shown above, I also later found a brown cutworm-shaped one in a different brassicacean bag and caught two starving Bagrada hilaris females to accompany all of the caterpillars. Unfortunately, the second female ran off and died one day when I was replacing their food; the first one is still doing well today and has apparently become somewhat habituated to my presence. At least I gave the deceased one a few extra meals before it died...? Sigh.

On October 14, two parasitoid wasp larvae emerged, finished off their hosts' green corpses by eating from the outside in, and then began vigorously silking the floor.

the parasitoids appear to be conspecifics too

The next day, I was quite dismayed to find that #1 had developed brown spots. Note the tiny hemipteran near it; I strongly suspect it is an anthocorid and thus carnivorous. I threw the true bug outdoors and trashed the unfortunate larva.

#2 and freshly emerged #3 were fine. #4 emerged later in the day.

Several more days later, they continued drooling silk without pupating. I was getting slightly worried, as they had somehow drooled a whole ring around the cup edge despite being seemingly incapable of  voluntary locomotion. Fortunately, all of them finally turned into wasp pupae after I put a large quantity of paper inside to serve as silk anchor points.

Several days later after that, the brown caterpillar was motionless. I thought the decaying broccoli gases had killed it, but another wasp larva exited the corpse.

brown larva, before demise

Unfortunately, I could not rear any of the wasps correctly. The green caterpillar parasitoids failed to eclose from their pupae properly, and I fed them to vertebrates out of pity. The syrphid(?) puparium produced a correctly shaped wasp though. It died before I saw it; perhaps it was too entangled in the others’ silk?

adults (note odd abdomen)