Collection update

50-ish Cryptocephalus spurcus larvae (F1)
7-ish Eleodes littoralis adults (F1, I may release these, we'll see)
Disabled Eleodes acuticauda female sent to Arthroverts, he says it is apparently now hiding normally again when it sleeps

Baccharis salicifolia (several)
Salvia leucophylla (1 specimen)
Salvia mellifera (1 specimen)
Cuscuta subinclusa (a lot)
Calasterella died a few months back =(
Croton californicus (2 specimens)
Monardella viminea "Russian River" (1 specimen)
Clinopodium chandleri (1 specimen)
Trifolium fragiferum (several)
Eriogonum elongatum? (cutting, hope it roots)
Iva hayesiana (several)
Grindelia stricta (several)
Encelia californica (several)
Salix (native one I assume, only 1 specimen)
Artemisia californica (several)
2 leafy Marchantiophyta spp., non-gemmiferous permanent fern gametophytes, & that one unidentified Chinese moss (several colonies)
Strobilanthes dyeriana or whatever its true name is (1 specimen and the branch I broke off of it)
Scorzonera? (1 specimen) I actually had this one for a while but never mentioned it, also differently shaped leaves from the same plant key to different species [it's really phenotypically plastic] so clearly someone needs to revise the genus

All of the native shrubs/trees are juveniles or medium adults (except for 1 Croton around full size, but full size adult Croton is the size of a medium juvenile sagebrush anyway).

I no longer love my new dirt molecule!

Some of the Exema were running up and down their plant frantically and then flew away (they did eat the sagebrush I provided though). I think I shall return all of them to their habitat, they clearly are stressed somehow.

Elater lecontei have also been released a few days ago, as will the 2 remaining Tiaja (neither of which has apparently laid eggs) and Xerophloea (which seems unfertilized) soon.

Cryptocephalus spurcus larvae are doing well tho, they doubled in size in like only a day or two. Also noticed they will eat lettuce like C. sanguinicollis.

Plans to rehome the disabled Eleodes acuticauda (which is miraculously still alive after all this time, having already seen 2 years, and in that time has lost only a palp even though old tenebs are supposed to be losing legs left and right) are also in the works, since I'm depressed and feeding it drains my mental health (plus it is doing that thing again where it won't hide under its provided shelters because they apparently emit some sort of bad odor only it can smell, and since it is so hard to find unmoldy bark here I'm not sure I can provide it a suitable replacement). Might get rid of the 6 or 7 surviving E. littoralis that I raised from the wild females' larvae too, depending on how stressed they are and I am (though currently they are apparently mostly inactive/buried and not throwing any fits unlike the acuticauda as far as I can tell).

The small millipedes are still doing somewhat ok though since they hide their eggs in the substrate where I can't euthanize them they are inevitably overpopulating as per law of nature and I always feel bad about it. That's why I like cryptocephalines and external-laying Auchenorrhyncha, if they're not laid underground or embedded in plant tissue you can just squish the eggs guilt free, it's not like eggs have feelings.

Released all adult beetles several days back

The rotten wood is doing that thing again where it gets all moldy and gross and it was stressing them out to the point they weren't sleeping, and I didn't have the energy to deal with it. Based on my observations I'm pretty sure the Megapenthes would've been pretty stressed during its waking hours even in a clean enclosure though, as even after I moved it to a clean container full of garden soil (which itself it kept spreading its elytra like it wanted to fly (but never flew; perhaps room temps too cold to flap wings)?

Anyways, guess I'll have to concentrate on sucking hoppers and plants for now. I still have 1 vial of rotten wood that never went bad and still smells nice though and I'm hoping that I can make more of whatever saproxylic microbes are responsible for the smell and mold suppression so I can inoculate other rotten-wood-making containers with them.

Well actually some of the E. lecontei larva vials are also clean-smelling, I lied.

new acquisitions

Eleodes littoralis pair (pictured) from woods near JPL; hoping that since these are relatively forest darklings they'll not do weird things low-density tenebs from featureless aridlands do. They've buried themselves and not moved (to my knowledge) in the week I've had them, not even at night.

the woods in question (note that this picture has more grass than usual for the area, though it's otherwise pretty representative)

Lots of upright-winged hopper nymphs caught at Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area (though I usually only catch 1-3 per hourlong trip; they're sparse), I have like a dozen or so now. Since like many hoppers they seem to have no ability to intentionally walk towards a host (and will starve to death if they don't walk onto one by accident) getting them to settle on the dodder stems I've provided them has been a pain. They walk towards light tho which makes it slightly less of a pain. Found them primarily on large, lush-looking Salvia mellifera and Artemisia californica. Here's some pictures of the scrublands I've been catching them at by the way, to give you an idea of what typical Santa Fe Dam chaparral looks like.

Lystridea nymph x3, I had a fourth but after I changed its cutting to a fresher one it rejected the fresher one repeatedly and died from famine unusually fast compared to the other hoppers I've raised (6 hrs vs. 3-ish days), seemingly due to effects of dehydration from a thin cuticle; this may in part explain why the genus is a narrow endemic (though perhaps it may be instead that the creature became a narrow endemic first and then lost dehydration resistance due to being in a sheltered microclimate). In the wild they seem to appear primarily on large contiguous patches of the same host as the upright-wings, with the upright-wing nymphs seeming to appear primarily at the disturbed edges of said patches and the Lystridea seeming to be more common in plants at the center and not edge (microclimate buffered in center I bet). Interestingly they seem to drink xylem and not phloem sap, unlike all my other current hoppers.

Also acquired unknown wireworm species (update: it's Athous axillaris) while collecting rotten wood for beetle oviposition substrate. The wood chunks it was from smelled so good by the way, not like the usual horrible mold smell rotten logs in my area tend to have; I let a few chunks go unsterilized (though I did pound them thoroughly to squish any eggs hiding in there) in hopes that whatever microbiota live in it can make my beetle enclosures continue to smell nice. Good-smelling saproxylic microbes are sooooooooooooooooo hard to find in my area.

I also bought some sage and sagebrush from CalBG's nursery the other day. The sagebrushes were looking very dehydrated (though healthy, and not wilted) and the sages were infested with powdery mildew but I picked out the lushest ones I could find of the former and an asymptomatic specimen of the latter as emergency food just in case the cuttings get mysteriously rejected again, and also so that the hoppers would have a place to oviposit once they grow up. Tried to see if the nursery staff could do anything about the Santa Fe Dam mulching and construction work habitat destruction thing, the person I talked to was preexistingly aware of the situation but couldn't do anything about it.