Hasty Cotinis mutabilis update

For those of you not up to date on my Cotinis experiment, here is a brief summary of the research!


- Hypothesis: being given access to branches or foliage-like objects to climb may cause captive Cotinis mutabilis to cease their restless flight attempts, which they constantly perform in captivity when not occupied with other things. I used this fake bouquet:

- Experimental candidates: 3 specimens, two male (above) and one mismolted specimen (seemingly female, below). All appear flightless for some reason.

- Analysis: Sample size way too small, so I have marked many conclusions below as tentative. Due to my rapidly diminishing sanity reserves I cannot afford to capture and feed more wild specimens. Will have to get rid of the three ASAP (trying to mail them live to an acquaintance). What did you expect?


- Notable results: Copulation appears to calm male restless wandering urges for a day or so.

All three specimens remained largely unwilling to fly indoors for some reason and could be allowed to freerange for very extensive periods on a fake plant (though would eventually fall off).

However, they would attempt flight (unsuccessfully) if taken outside and exposed to the sun, even though two of the three had normal-looking hindwings. Note that other Cotinis were able to lift off successfully indoors, so the cooler temps inside are not preventing flight. Fake foliage may have some degree of calming effect on Cotinis, as specimens were seen voluntarily motionless ("involuntary" is when they freeze in alarm upon sensing suspicious vibrations) on it at daytime occasionally.

Note that specimens sometimes become severely frightened by other specimens and may freeze, abandon food, or defecate in alarm; evidently they have difficulty distinguishing between conspecifics and danger.

Nevertheless, specimens often became restless and wandered violently when no longer hungry; evidently the fake foliage could not calm their restlessness fully.

Specimens also accept fake foliage as sleeping areas and will remain overnight on their perches. They prefer it more than damp paper towels, and refuse to sleep if in damp towels. They accept dried towels though; this finding supports earlier findings from previous years and I am fairly confident that Cotinis mutabilis consistently hate damp paper towels as beds. Oddly, these three also hated sleeping underground in damp soil and would dig for hours after sundown but quickly slept once given a perch.

I was too hasty in assuming all C males readily mated w person fingers when calm. These two haven't, despite extensive handling.

Second Diaperis sighting!

In the afternoon shade. Ovipositing apparently. 6:43 to 6:48, it fled back into a crevice at 48 cause I breathed too hard on it. I hate being a large conspicuous bumbling mammal so much.

Update: third appearance, possibly same individual, at 7:45 dusk. It then semi-immediately vanished.

Diaperis rufipes, 2020 season

The D. rufipes hostfungus had made a tiny crustlike fruiting body a few months ago this summer, but it promptly died. However now it is pumping out a properly shaped fruit, much to my surprise. I thought it was going to skip the large 3D fruits this year! I will be continuously watching it to collect data on the biology of rufipes.

Unfortunately as with previous years the only other dominant visitor to the fungus is a certain nondescript brown fly that seems to be a lauxaniid, with the rest being a very few species of boring generalist earwigs, gnats, slugs, etc.

Last night I spotted my first living rufipes adult and took it in for some photos. Unsurprisingly my idiot phone AI decided to mess with me again, even under bright light it insisted the red stripes were black and refused to focus despite being perfectly capable of doing so, so I'm not going to post most of those pics here.

However I have captured a single pic of it with flared wings (and thus proved it isn't flightless) and visible red, and this is undoubtedly the only photograph of it doing so in existence!

Like I said previously, it is (like most other longwinged tenebrionids) extremely unwilling to fly and cannot be induced to do so unless malnourished and attempting dispersal, so instead I turned it upside down and photographed it when it spread its elytra to right itself.

By the way the flared wings pic doesn't show its deep ruby red color perfectly so here's a semiblurry shot of it shortly after being placed back on its host.

Physciella chloantha is no longer back!

I didn't kill them. The vertebrates I am stuck with kept getting vertebrate germs everywhere and I had to abandon the project for now. EDIT: Also, I forgot to mention this, but all lichens Hazel sent me are now either dead or in permanent dry storage because of the above mentioned problems with captive vertebrates. I guess the Florida Lichens Experiment was a fail.

Physciella chloantha is back!

Now that I have had a better understanding of lichen supersaturation depression and spray bottles, I expect the chances of success to be much higher! Hopefully the specimens actually decide to actually grow this time.

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.

Pomacea is dead

Pomacea got killed a few months earlier. After finding myself in a dilemma involving perpetual extreme exhaustion and suboptimal weather conditions I was unable to change its water in time and thus poisoned it to death.

I kind of saw it coming (my low sanity and the resulting tiredness has caused significant problems in the past), but it had the nerve to be dead right when I was attempting to mail it out to someone with more aquarium freespace than myself.

Toxomerus marginatus, slow motion

Two males doing... something?

Female flies away.

Other hoppers do it too

(note dandelion scrap in mouth)

Remember all the Scudderia mexicana handfeeding? Guess what, even more severe nervous wrecks like Schistocerca nitens can also be picked up and given snacks too! This specimen had highly idiosyncratic eating habits very unlike those of the tettigoniids (which strongly prefer high-energy items like sugar and pollen). It took a few bites out of lawn grasses (never seen any other polyphagous grazing invert eat lawn!) and white clover foliage intermittently while wandering; it refused to eat white clover flowers and had minimal interest in wet raisin, and after some persuading and hesitation decided to violently ingest an entire dandelion inflorescence. It then palpated and possibly chewed a second dandy but was evidently not interested, and later flew off.

Despite the refusal of dandy two, no alarm behaviors were induced upon offering, so here is a video demonstrating proper etiquette when feeding easily frightened Orthoptera! Note that S. mexicana and Phaneroptera nana appear to be only frightened by sudden tactile stimuli, while most S. nitens specimens (not this one of course) will panic when they see close-range abrupt movements.

One (1) luck obtained!

Unfortunately, my current lawn's syrphid biodiversity consists almost exclusively of Toxomerus marginatus, which float around in sparse clouds near tasty grass inflorescences and dandelions. Fortunately, last Saturday I photographed a rare aberrant marginatus specimen! If you view the fullsized image you may notice that its tail is crooked and has a lopsided splotch.

April Fool's 2020

I can't wait to FINALLY key all my Coniontis to species!

I sure am pleased with myself for duping two bugguide editors in a row!

As always, click to zoom!