Another boring update with surprise vacation (also boring)

Unfortunately I accidentally flattened the Graphocephala cythura female a few months ago while trying to release it during a host shortage (cause of that thing where Croton californicus seems prone to very slowly dropping leaves from dehydration indoors despite having damp soil and strong lighting), haha another thing to feel guilty about haha,,,

I also released the Micrutalis (aside from 1 unmated specimen) and moved the Xerophloea (I currently have 7 of the latter) to weedy mallow indoors to allow the Croton to recover. X. is particularly destructive when it feeds because it causes strong hopperburn and can distort new growth, whereas the Micrutalis seems to cause little damage even at relatively high densities, which I guess makes sense given that M. seems adapted to being relatively common on its host for much of the year without overexploiting it, but given that my copious watering seems to have boosted M. populations slightly above wild densities I was getting kind of worried anyway as the honeydew was seemingly causing premature leaf drop and also growing a lot of sooty mold. Wild Crotons here usually have perfectly clean leaves because M. and X. shoot their honeydew away and thus make it unlikely to land on foliage, but of course when there are many hoppers on a plant the leaves get dirty anyway due to infinite monkey theorem reasons. Still, the fact that I was able to increase the population density above wild levels does imply I've figured out a reason why wilderness insects are naturally low-density in my area, which I've been investigating as part of my whole "why do restoration plantings reliably fail to support non-synanthropic arthropods" thing. Also, note how the pictured X. nymphs retain the pale blues and greens of Croton even on other hosts; the body color isn't strictly genetic and can change based on environment but apparently this strain is so adapted to Croton-feeding that the various pale morphs can show up even on host species incapable of pale foliage. I've noticed some mildly interesting phenotypic plasticity in the Micrutalis too, there's a yellow with black specks nymph morph that doesn't normally appear but showed up in small numbers during the sooty mold outbreak and I swear to god it looked so much like it had mold specks on it. Kinda cool when bugs mimic their own feeding damage.

Disabled Eleodes acuticauda is doing ok, a few months back I'd found it some cardboard hides for it that it doesn't hate the smell of.

Calasterella dead from a series of mishaps, if I didn't mention it before. I have acquired new stock.

Also scooped up some fresh Helminthoglypta from an area of Santa Fe Dam threatened by development from misguided sustainability initiatives. For those of you not in the know, these are snails which spend most of their lives dormant waiting for the rain, and are commonish in my area but under high conservation risk because they have small ranges (in captivity all three local spp. just act like normal snails and seem not to need any dormancy or unusual diet, as far as I can tell, although they seem to hate the smell of coir and won't eat rose petals). Also going to the ceiling seems to be a sign of stress for them, they do it for a day if I lift their foot off the ground. If lifted together with the ground they don't do it. I'm currently working on an informal proj with the Invertebrate Club of SoCal to stop the development effort btw, if you can lend any sort of aid please let me know.

Dodder (C. subinclusa) underfed but surviving. A major problem is that hosts are expensive and another major problem is that Home Depot has shit biosecurity. Still trying to get rid of spider mites on the strawberry, fortunately I had enough foresight not to keep it too close to my more valuable flora. 

That weird polytrichaceous-looking Chinese moss is still alive and has fissioned, as is true of many of the other exotic cryptogams I have. I also am amassing various native and nonnative angiosperms for insect/dodder fodder and informal research purposes, which I will not bother to mention in detail because of a lack of noteworthy behavior. But free tip, I recently discovered firsthand that you can asexually reproduce Baccharis and Eriogonum (and probably many other natives) without rooting hormone if you bury stem fragments. I thought that was a myth but then I realized that the fragment has to be mostly defoliated and mostly buried for it to work properly, otherwise it tends to wilt to death even if there are preexisting roots on the stem because angiosperms are weird like that.

Updated Research Stash page (see below).

Went to Invertebrate Club of SoCal outreach meeting at California (Native) Botanic Garden a few months back, where I presented some live Oedemasia salicis caterpillars I found starving to death on the sidewalk and saved. I don't usually make public appearances because I'm a transhumanist and don't think my meats are aesthetically representative of me (I kept my face/body out of the recording on purpose so don't go looking for it), but I was desperate and hoping to reel in one of CalBG's juicy higher-ups. However was just asked generic amateur questions by everyone and bored to death. No offense amateurs.

Some of the larvae have turned into adults by now and were released. In an effort to fight the weird habit of entomologists of falsely accusing bugs of being aphagous I tried to feed the adults, but could not get them to do so even with the forced proboscis unroll trick people use to feed hawkmoths. But they do have a tiny (albeit functional-looking) proboscis so I can't prove aphagy. I mean I've seen Estigmene drinking with a similarly small tongue so size alone is not indication of vestigiality and I know there are notodontids that do adult-feed.


I also went to Joshua Tree for a few days (where I saw creosote and an Eleodes armata in person for the first time ever) and was bored to death the whole time because there wasn't much to do besides look at eye candy. But when you're offered a free trip to the high desert and you have nothing better to do, well, you don't refuse do you?

C's Enormous Research Literature Stash™

Xerophloea peltata, Micrutalis sp.

Here's another filler image for decoration. The Xerophloea, Micrutalis, and singular Graphocephala female have all been doing well now that I seem to be getting a hang of the invisible mystery forces that increase and decrease host palatability over time, although I'm still trying to find a shelter object for the disabled Eleodes acuticauda female that it won't either reject the smell of or get its senile legs caught on. Finding the teneb a piece of bark that doesn't smell like mold is a weirdly difficult task in this part of the country.





But without further ado, here's some research papers/books that I've found fun and/or useful. Papers with similar topics tend to be clustered for your convenience. I expect to periodically update this every now and then (last update: 10/5/2026).

Also this isn't really a paper but I wrote a thing here on adult feeding in Saturniidae.

An insect-induced novel plant phenotype for sustaining social life in a closed system
(aphids bioengineering trippy gall-sanitation systems)

How aphids lose their marbles

(more cool gall sanitation)

Cockroaches: ecology, behavior, and natural history
Free book! Most of the later chapters get boring tho.

Love spots

Arthropod eye multitasking. See also: gyrinid split vision.

The nuptial dance of male mayflies helps avoid mistaken interception by other males

Hidden in plain orange: aposematic coloration is cryptic to a colorblind insect predator

Learning ability and longevity: a symmetrical evolutionary trade-off in Drosophila

The evolution of longevity in Heliconius butterflies
See my commentary on this paper here.

Retention of memory through metamorphosis: can a moth remember what it learned as a caterpillar?

Controlled iris radiance in a diurnal fish looking at prey
(no not bioluminescence, it's cooler than that)

Xmrks the spot: life history tradeoffs, sexual selection and the evolutionary ecology of oncogenesis
Swordtails that use melanomas in courtship displays

Experimental evidence of pollination in marine flowers by invertebrate fauna

Animal-mediated fertilization in bryophytes

Bird feeders have caused a dramatic evolution of California hummingbirds

The Californian urban butterfly fauna is dependent on alien plants

Lethal trap created by adaptive evolutionary response to an exotic resource

Glassfrogs conceal blood in their liver to maintain transparency

Behavioral sabotage of plant defenses by insect herbivores

When a key innovation becomes redundant: Patterns, drivers and consequences of elytral reduction in Coleoptera

Method of handling affects post-capture encounter probabilities in male Hypolimnas bolina (L.) (Nymphalidae)

Do bumble bees play?
This paper thinks so, and peer reviewers don't seem to have complained about it but there's serious flaws in the study. Namely: even though the path is unobstructed, bees (like most flying insects that aren't Heliconius) have little to no understanding of obstacle avoidance when transparent objects are involved, and are also negatively geotactic. I myself have never seen any arthropod unambiguously play, and few examples that even seem to be ambiguous play.

Suggested methodology improvement: present fully free-ranging Bombus with balls in front of the nest exit, or at least use a cage with a higher ceiling to rule out geotaxis-induced ball climbing (in the video, the bees repeatedly flap their wings while rolling; high ceiling would allow flapping bees to fly upwards in a straight line away from the ball if they wanted to, and thus confirm or rule out ball rolling being an accidental result of geotaxis).

Melanization in response to wounding is ancestral in arthropods and conserved in albino cave species
With that being said Porcellio scaber does produce melanin for wound healing.

Juvenile coloration as a predictor of health in Nezara viridula (Heteroptera: Pentatomidae) rearing
With the Oedemasia salicis larvae I reared and released a while ago there were a small number of dark, unhealthy larvae too (leftmost in comparison pic here; though as they were famine rescues the dark larvae were probably starved/overheated the longest, as opposed to being constitutionally weak; they plumped up after I fed them a lot and pupated normally); I wonder if the same mechanism (i.e. weakened specimens turn dark self-protectively) applies?

Eating when ill is risky: immune defense impairs food detoxification in the caterpillar Manduca sexta

The weird eusociality of polyembryonic parasites

Fungus and fruit consumption by harvestmen and spiders (Opiliones, Araneae): the vegetarian side of two predominantly predaceous arachnid groups

Conservation biology of Cryptocephalus species and other threatened UK beetles
Mostly just worth reading about for the whole "needs successional mosaic habitat" thing. Also since my local climate is more arid than the paper's I believe cryptocephalines in my area are probably population-limited in part by excessive insolation/drought, not a lack of it. They do seem more common in areas adjacent to shade objects.

Ode to Alabama: the meteoric fall of a once extraordinarily abundant moth
If I'm not mistaken, Spodoptera littoralis (which shares the same common name as Alabama argillacea) has been mistakenly used as the adult moth in the header image. The actual paper's findings seem valid tho (I suspect Dissosteira longipennis may also be in serious danger by the way, and a few other pests).

Is there life after parasitism? Survival, longevity, and oogenesis in Acheta domesticus (Orthoptera: Gryllidae) infected with the hairworm, Paragordius varius (Phylum: Nematomorpha)

Disproportionate declines of formerly abundant species underlie insect loss

On the perils of ecological restoration: lessons from the El Segundo Blue Butterfly
(The dangers of locally-nonnative native plants)

The Sphex story: How the cognitive sciences kept repeating an old and questionable anecdote

Laboratory methods for rearing soil beetles
Free semi-book!

Rearing blister beetles (Coleoptera, Meloidae)

The Spanish and Mexican baseline of California tree and shrubland distributions since the late 18th century

Assaying lepidopteran flight directionality with non-invasive methods that permit repeated use and release after testing

The butterflies of Southern California
Free (but somewhat outdated; it's from 1973) book!
The comments about Phoebis sennae being "no longer abundant, and in danger of dying out" are intriguing, given that it was known to be previously common, and in the 21st century is now common again.

Screenshots section:

Ethics reasons aside, freezing also takes forever for big or endothermic insects and does not kill taxa able to withstand it through antifreeze secretions

Neuroptera and a few others also do this

From Cambridge Handbook of Play. The original paper says "autumn-born males play rarely" [not never] and that administering spring-born males' secretions apparently caused autumn-borns to play more.

Why I'm not a fan of (unnatural) invertebrate color morphs (melanin also plays nonpigmentational roles in the arthropod neural, visual, and immune systems btw; see above)

it mimics a bug to trick the female into approaching

Romalea didn't microevolve this it's just naturally immune

how extinction debt works

I once saw a video of B. mori voluntarily eating various grocery fruits, despite their not being starved of mulberry leaf

part 1

part 2

larvae of some Meloidae (here Tricrania) turn into "pontoons" to live "aquatically" in honey

But let's put the complaining aside for a moment

 

As a filler image here's a red-beige Micrutalis female I raised (it's not teneral). I didn't know this particular Micrutalis species even had a morph like this, I've never seen any adults with red in the field (only ones with varying amounts of black and beige). I've long known other members of the genus had red morphs, though.






Anyways, here is a neat study about something I've long been curious about: how pollen-nonfeeding close relatives of Heliconius die of old age. According to previous papers Heliconius's close relative the julia (Dryas iulia) gradually suffers malnutrition as a result of the nectar-based* diet being poor in certain nutrients, and soon dies from this no matter how well fed it is; Heliconius reportedly avoids this fate by having evolved pollen feeding** and is thus relatively longlived (a number of other longlived-adult lep taxa have been known to achieve their lifespans via adult consumption of fermenting fruit, which contains important microbial nutrients and presumably functions as an analogue of pollen feeding. Note that Danaus plexippus isn't exactly a fruitrot drinker and doesn't consume pollen either; I assume it achieves long adult life via some mechanism unrelated to adult diet).
*Julia is known to drink from puddles and teardrops in the wild. Tears of some if not all animals are protein-rich. I'm still under the overall impression that the diet seems to be mostly nectar tho. Also, some nectars have been reported richer in amino acids than previously believed, although whether amino acids derived solely from nectaring or teardrinking can be nutritionally complete is not known to me.
**To my knowledge, Heliconius does not swallow any portion of the pollen that isn't liquid/liquefied. I'm assuming jawed moths (see below) can chew and swallow the solid portions of pollen.

Long story short, this study disputes that classic story to some extent; some notable bits I found interesting:
- Dryas iulia fed a sugar solution with pollen in it exhibited a normal adult lifespan, but there were subtle behavioral changes
- D. iulia adult exhibits signs of DNA damage and weakened antioxidant activity with age, in other words its short adult lifespan appears to be in part or in whole due to "classical aging" as opposed to malnutrition death
- It was offhandedly mentioned that butterflies (paper was unclear about whether this happened to Dryas, Heliconius, or both) "were spotted flying vigorously around the cages just hours before being found dead"; this is in contrast to many insects, which tend to become listless and/or flightless a day or three before senescence-related death
- Heliconius of both sexes gradually lost weight over the course of their lives just like Dryas even when pollen was abundantly available; it is unclear whether this occurs in the wild, since the laboratory Heliconius colony could copulate ad libitum, which the authors speculated may possibly be causing weight loss. It would be interesting to see if weight loss occurs or not in H. completely prevented from mating.






But a different study I'm too tired to link said somewhere that putting pollen into sugar solution isn't "enough" and that the nutrients remain trapped and digestionally inaccessible within the pollen or something like that (despite claims to the contrary), and that because of this Heliconius has proteases in its saliva (also despite claims to the contrary). And the study I did link to didn't give the pollen in the sugar solution any fancy special treatment (nor did they test how much of the pollen-derived nutrients were actually being absorbed by the adult julias), so it's possible that D. iulia may have lacked the digestive enzymes to absorb most of what was in the pollen (although the subtle behavioral changes suggest that the D. iulia absorbed at least some pollen substance).



With that being said, though, given that D. iulia exhibits physiological signs consistent with "classical aging", even if some researcher made some magic pollen formula that was concretely proven to be absorbable by julias and other pollen nonfeeding butterflies I'm pretty sure they'd not live much longer than they normally do. Note that I am not implying nectar-only diet is nutritionally complete, only that it's hypothetically possible old age kills them before malnutrition. Adults of various butterflies (and of various nectar-feeding parasitoid wasps) that are outside the scope of this article have been documented to continuously lose weight over their adult lives by the way (if my memory is trustable, this is not just oviposition making them lighter) so in any case their body condition definitely deteriorates over time. I have, however, seen reports of certain migratory noctuids gaining fat by drinking nectar; I should look into that, although I will note that fat gain is not incompatible with gradual malnutrition if the fat noctuids are gaining fat but gradually depleting a finite stock of certain nonfat substances (nitrogen I bet) during adulthood.

Somewhat relatedly, the jawed moth Micropterix calthella appears naturally shortlived despite being able to consume pollen (paywalled paper; relevant text reproduced below).

Minor note

 Xerophloea nymphs! Photo kind of blurry so I'm posting it as blue text.

Also Micrutalis have not re-complained when I brought their host back indoors and the single Graphocephala cythura female is contentedly feeding on the same Croton too. Perhaps it was my better lighting. Perhaps the now more well-established root system is making the host more well hydrated and thus easier to drink from. God knows.

I wish I had more interesting complex dynamics in my life

nymphs are dimorphic

As there is no light visible at the end of the tunnel, however, here are the latest boring updates on my specimens:

- Micrutalis nymphs and adults are still doing well. The ones that aren't being eaten, I mean. At night little spiders sometimes show up and bite them, apparently whatever they sequester from their host isn't enough to protect them from Generic Generalist Predators. It seems that bringing their host indoors causes subtle phytochemical changes that may(?) make them freak out and die which is why I've been leaving them outdoors. The ones in the pic seem to be last instar btw.

- On the other hand Xerophloea peltata are both still alive and enjoying the great indoors. I saw the green one oviposit last night.

- I've been calling my non-gemmiferous Mysterious Fern-Type Gametophyte Thing the "noniridescent gametophyte" but recently noted it does apparently iridesce under certain conditions? Will post photo later cause I'm unmotivated but I got a photo of it doing that. The fact that the first two ferns I've grown have been doing that suggest that iridescence is a widespread and undernoticed phenomenon in fern gametophytes in general.

- That one Cryptocephalus larva still hasn't pupated like its brethren. It's been in its drought dormancy mode for the past weeks, I've been slacking on its care from depression. It doesn't seem to mind too much fortunately, I'd feel bad if it did.

- The nearly legless Eleodes has been refusing to hide under its cardboard these past months for some reason. I've repeatedly tried changing its substrate, changing its hides, nothing seems to work. This is not a problem for which caresheets offer any help. I nevertheless have a feeling I'm about to be figuring things out.

- Cylindrodesmus-type millipedes continue to breed, eat cereal, etc.

- Calasterella recovering from a watering mistake I made but otherwise isn't doing anything. Some of the chinese and other exotic cryptogams are still alive.

- Dodders and other angiosperms not doing anything worth my time to mention.

blahblah

 Dictyssa female expired from natural causes. Presumed male escaped, I have not refound it in 2 days so it's probably doomed. I want to stop rearing insects, I really do, they're so boring and it's not worth the risk and effort and isn't that conservationally beneficial anyway but I've seen the way even synanthropic Neoscona keep deflating and dying compared to only a handful of yrs ago and D. obliqua is seemingly a summer phenology specialist (the most drought prone time of year!) and with the rapidity of anthropogenic precipitation decr- forget it you've heard my complaining a million times. My life's a garbage fire and not just for ento-related reasons. There're mold spores in my hair right now and large parts of my personality are missing.

A few Micrutalis matured.

Micrutalis nymphs hatched

Their host is in even worse shape than before but the nymphs inexplicably seem content and aren't restless. Sometimes they don't move even when poked.

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 Black Micrutalis dead. I noticed it was suffering from whatever ailment makes hoppers "starve" to death surrounded by food but I couldn't get it back to its habitat in time. I really tried so hard to and I almost succeeded but there was a certain incident that day in which I was being mistreated (because I live a shitty life myself) and it stopped me from getting back. The untreated mental illness only made things worse. In any case, the beige one has been released successfully, apparently in part because it wasn't overexerting itself to death like the black one. 

If Santa Fe Dam weren't being destroyed by idiot restorationists I wouldn't even have to deal with hopper rearing! Not that that'd do much good anyway, considering my inability to get them to stop or to even assess which hoppers are higher conservation priority*, and the rate at which shortlived insects evolve to lose adaptions to the wild when cultured, but it's marginally better than nothing, right? Right?

I'm sick of seeing insects die. Considering that all my "slots" are full or unusable I think I'm just going to stop acquiring more arthropod species for the foreseeable future, lest I create any bigger a mess.





*Commonness isn't a reliable indicator.




Xerophloea and Dictyssa are still doing okay, besides that one and only one dicty is getting restless (oviposition urges?)

Going to have to get rid of Scolops and the weevil

 Former still seems to be suffering from drought-legacy phytochemical effects as it abandoned both willow and Croton (and this despite the willow currently being sopping wet), latter flags petioles and pedicels (not eating the actual leaves/flowers, which die from the flagging) and my Croton specimen simply isn't large enough to tolerate this form of wasteful chewing.

Annoyingly, whatever drought-related phytochem changes certainly don't seem to be affecting this small (1cm) measuring worm, an adult must have oviposited on/near my large* Salix lasiolepis specimen back when the plant was still in my yard. I mean, it's welcome to stay and eat the willow since hardly anyone else wants to, but I'm irritated it seems so content when the hoppers are stressing out. 

*I have acquired more willows yesterday, probably the same species; they were juveniles near the Bridge to Nowhere, and were so crowded they could not have all survived to adulthood so I figured taking a few would be harmless.

Before I realized the Scolops was so distressed I also took this nymph from the Bridge to Nowhere sprouts. Fortunately, so far it has shown no signs of distress after being put on the large specimen (I am not feeding it on the small specimens so they can grow leaves quicker). Not sure why it's white, because S. lasiolepis leaf undersides are white but not this white.

Also took home this Micrutalis pair today (pictured here before capture). They're color polymorphic. Only membracid I've seen ever, and the most common hemipteran on Croton californicus at Santa Fe Dam (but still relatively sparse). I've noted these are often present on small, droughted, and/or thermalrefugeless plants in the wild so figured they probably wouldn't throw a fit in captivity.

Current non-dormant inventory:
- Salix lasiolepis (several)
- Croton californicus x2 (gained one today by pulling it out of a sidewalk crack)
- Heterotheca grandiflora x1
- Calasterella californica x1
- Unidentified white hopper and caterpillar x1 each
- Dictyssa obliqua x2
- Micrutalis x2
- Xerophloea peltata x2 (still feeding calmly)
- Cuscuta subinclusa (much)
- Cuscuta californica (much, but less; I've been neglecting watering its host because mentally ill)
- Various hosts for the dodders, mostly weeds and domesticates
- Disabled Eleodes acuticauda female I offhandedly mentioned a year or so ago x1 (it has not lost any leg since I rescued it from the wilderness, unfortunately it's stressed right now, apparently because its shelter objects have gotten old and stale and apparently smell wrong to it; I need to find it a new thing to hide under)

I also plan to germinate a new Navarretia batch soon.