blugh

 Vomited the shoulderbands back into their (at risk of being renovated) rock pile due to my poor mental health making it too hard to care for them (they're too hungry and their feces are way more prone to gross bacteria than a lot of other saproxylic bugs', but letting them go dormant carries mortality risk). Dumped a generic yellow slime mold I never posted about back to its habitat too, as it was cowardly and bad at foraging and would end up having its bag filled with rotting food half the time.

Replaced them with a Coelocnemis magna specimen I scooped up off the side of the Santa Fe Dam nature trail. It went under a tube and fell asleep for three days. See? Low maintenance.

The misery did not actually end

 I completed a semi-formal research study on Asterella californica around last month, but I still did not obtain access to any scanning electron microscopes or other desired science machines so it was boring. Cue continued daily mental breakdowns.

Also, I went and grabbed a bunch of these from Franklin Canyon in early December (killing one in the process; it had somehow been smashed under a piece of wood I thought was too lightweight to smash millipedes. Oh god). Hoping to breed them for restoration/conservation reasons.

They're likely native Macrosternodesmidae, but, again, will probably need that SEM to identify them. They're eating unsweetened cheerios, carrots, and plant detritus, though I've had trouble obtaining plant detritus they seem to enjoy as they seem to dislike the wood I provided. Fortunately the cheerios seem to be well-accepted. Of course, I could feed them the leaves the Cylindrodesmus(?) are currently thriving on, but I don't want any microbes from that container to hypothetically get in. I've recently learned some microbes are bad at dispersal and therefore are both prone to becoming invasive spp. and not necessarily requiring aseptic conditions to prevent containment breach)

Due to the death, it's likely I'll have to go all the way back to Franklin to get a safer chance of having both males/females (the three macrosternos I currently have belong to two morphospecies; I do not know if they are different species, for obvious reasons). My knees are not looking forward to any of this.

Also, I've determined that the restless stereotyped pacing many aridland tenebrionids are prone to in captivity is correlated at least in part with light pollution. I kept a Helops confluens(?) adult for a while (it has now been released back into its wild habitat) and noted that (as with Coniontis I had previously kept) its pacing was invariably confined to the brightest two or three inches of its enclosure at night, even when the light was extremely dim. I shall refuse to keep live tenebrionids (aside from mmmmmaybe Zophobas atratus, which is pretty immune to such behavioral pathologies and behaves very normally in captivity) for the foreseeable future. Not that I desire Zophobas. Lays too many eggs for its own good, and I have no predators I can feed off the excess to. Going to separate the sexes in the unlikely event I do somehow end up with some superworms.

Addendum: before I forget, here are all my currently nondormant plants:

- Iridescent unknown gametophyte (still doing well)

- Noniridescent unknown gametophyte (ailing, may be dying from cyanobacterial competition; attempts to save it have so far been fails because it seems picky about what dirt it likes)

- Sphaerocarpos (namely, the descendants of this; they survived the summer unscathed, in case I didn't mention it)

- Various mosses that I don't particularly care about

- Cuscuta subinclusa (feeding on weedy nightshade of some sort)

Addendum 2: My C. californica(?) was able to induce the formation of a green island on a dying chili pepper's stem which remained fleshy/green even as the rest of the stem dried out (this does not appear to be a known ability that dodders have), but I have not noticed this ability in C. subinclusa on dying hosts. Note that absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence; perhaps the green islands are only induced in some circumstances and not others. Time will tell.

Addendum 3: I'm also micromanaging some wild Oncopeltus nymphs that were likely the eggs laid by a dispersing adult I helped find a host for. Like their parent they're boring and mostly just sit in place drinking seeds all day (and when they do walk around I've seen many examples of irrational foraging and (almost) no evidence of intelligent behavior, though I know they're definitely smarter than they seem.) Hopefully the population sustains itself long enough for me to give them a locally-native milkweed genotype. Gotta provide habitat for native bugs, etc.

Addendum 4: my yellow slime mold dried up cause I forgot to water it. I also have a pink one (dry) that appears to be ripe fruits of Lycogala. Will rehydrate them in an estimated year or two (if I even manage to live that long) and see if they're still alive.

Trivial updates

 Slime still alive, has taken yeast pellets. Often moves away from food for no apparent reason.

Millipedes still overpopulating. I have thought up some tactics to encourage Original Adult (it still seems to be alive) to lay its eggs on the surface. By the way, for the record I am well aware that its life doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things and that arthropods are possibly all unconscious anyways, but I shall nevertheless attempt to commit ethics at it for some reason.

Anyways, the juveniles grow quite rapidly. Here is the exterior of an egg nest and a nearly adult juvenile:

All juveniles I have are white. It seems very likely they do not become visibly colored until shortly after (or during the premolt/molt to) adulthood. So far it appears that none of the immatures have reached full size yet.

I have kidnapped a slime mold from the woods

 

I am surprised the thing did not die on me.

I fail to culture slimes again

I have been kidnapping slimes (probably Fuligo septica, say the slime people) off a neighbor's lawn! It was in vain though, chunks removed from the pictured specimen largely did not move and also refused to feed.

It seems I had collected them too late in the ripening sequence to reverse the fruiting process.

Slime update

Unfortunately, the spring rains have stopped; I suppose I will have to wait until next year for wild plasmodia and fresh precipitation to appear.

How to catch really large protists

Introduction

The "plasmodial slime molds" (Myxomycetes or Myxogastria) are a diverse group of protists; many species are macroscopic(!) during considerable portions of their life cycles. The large yellow slime Physarum polycephalum is used as a laboratory model organism and is consequently well-studied and widely cultured (it is even commercially available), but many other species appear to be quite understudied in certain areas.

I have recently taken an interest in cultivation of large non-polycephalum myxomycetes. Oddly, this seems to be rarely attempted by anyone (especially non-researchers), despite the fact that many large species are aesthetically attractive and apparently photographed quite regularly by macrophotography hobbyists.



Analysis and current progress

According to this:

Order Physarales has phaneroplasmodia, which are typically large, colorful and conspicuous

Order Stemonitales has aphanoplasmodia, which are macroscopic but also typically transparent and cryptic until shortly before fruiting

Order Trichiales has trichiaceous plasmodia, which share morphological features with both of the above-listed

Order Echinosteliales has protoplasmodia, which are microscopic

Order Liceales was not mentioned; however, in another research article it was stated that the order contained both protoplasmodial and phaneroplasmodial species.


iNaturalist (unlike Bugguide) suffers from severe misidentification plagues; however, it is nevertheless useful for rough estimates. Within California, the most commonly observed species on its website include:

Fuligo septica (Physarales), a massive, ubiquitous yellow synanthrope, often mulch-associated

Lycogala epidendrum (Liceales), which forms puffy reddish fruiting bodies that darken to brown. It is probably large enough to have phanero- and not protoplasmodia; however, it seems largely restricted to rotted forest wood (I am currently unable to access forests due to various reasons, including severe dung contamination)

Enteridium/Reticularia lycoperdon (Liceales): round, white, large; according to this British paper, it is also found on rotting wood but is at least somewhat synanthropic.


Current slime-collection efforts have focused largely on F. septica due to its highly synanthropic behavior and conspicuous plasmodia. Despite the presence of intermittent rains for several weeks (Fuligo requires copious moisture for its large plasmodia, and I live in a semidesert), I have failed to detect any plasmodia in various small mulched flowerbeds. Perhaps the local public garden may be a more suitable area for exploring, as several iNaturalist Fuligo observations were located there.