In which I (among other things) suddenly begin to enjoy seafood

 Hiiiiii! Long time no talk! Though admittedly almost nothing has happened in the past months, so it's not like I had anything to say.

First: Sphaerocarpos! As I mentioned in my last post, I have found a wild colony. After numerous mishaps involving desiccation (one particularly amusing incident involved the sample pictured above somehow drying out and dying while in a sealed cup) I have finally established a culture. More on them later.

I also keep neglecting to mention this moss, which has not visibly grown at all since I found it last June. It appears to be a hydrophilous specialist as I have never seen it away from leaking water and seem to have only seen it twice ever (perhaps it is Didymodon tophaceus).

Unfortunately, a few days ago its top rapidly died. I assume that being suddenly moved to bright indirect light harmed it (yeah, mosses have been known to be sunburned by even weak light). In the wild it was in a place with direct sun but I had been keeping it shaded for a long time, so perhaps it had desynthesized its anti-sunburn defenses in the shade and could not resynthesize them rapidly enough.

You may note the green thing to its left. That is a gametophyte (fern it seems) of unknown origin. It probably arrived in my garden soil bag as an unintentionally imported spore, because the USDA is terrible at its job. Hopefully it will produce a sporophyte one day. Although given that there is only one of it in the cup I'm not optimistic.

I also went on a rather exciting shopping trip yesterday! I found several large marine algae as bycatch in the snail tank. Unfortunately pretty much all the snails were quite dead (in addition to being unethical, I'm also pretty sure it violates several food sanitation laws). Here you can see a bleached coralline alga and some sort of buoy-possessing seaweed. If I get a marine tank and learn how to disinfect live algae I'm going to fill it with rescued bycatch from the seafood tanks.

Also a number of the store fruits were heavily infested with scale insects. Did I mention the USDA was terrible at its job?

Anyways, I also brought home an unidentifiable gametophyte! It was growing as a weed in one of the store flowerpots so I took it home for free. It was neither of the two thalloid marchantiophytes that are supposed to be greenhouse pests (Lunularia cruciata, Marchantia polymorpha), so I suspect it may be an undiscovered invasive. Hopefully I can culture it to a size where it's less unIDable.

I accidentally raise a bunch of puffy worms

A month ago I found fourteen starving Galgula partita caterpillars on a weedy Oxalis in my yard. The former had completely defoliated the latter. 

I keep promising myself "no more pet bugs", but, well, the plight of the specimens tugged at my heartstrings and I couldn't resist taking them home. Also, before you ask, I could not ascertain the adaptive value of their puffiness. They never seemed to use their bulges for anything and were honestly quite boring to watch (pretty much all they did was eat and walk around).

Anyways, eleven successfully pupated and turned into adults (all of which I released). The other three died from assorted mysterious reasons in case you're wondering. No parasitoids emerged.

Here is an adult!

I wanted to get more adult pics to show off their extreme color polymorphism, but, well, they were very uncooperative. The pics I do have are either blurry or depict my fingers (for aesthetic reasons I dislike having visible body parts onscreen), so I'm not posting them here. Also I'm too lazy to retype my rearing tips so here you go.

Unrelated news:

- My Asterella californica specimen was killed in an accident several months ago. It wasn't caused by bad care, the accident was just an annoying random event.

- I just found another colony of Sphaerocarpos!

At long last, a Coniontis recording

I caught a Coniontis on the sidewalk several days ago and successfully filmed its vibration behavior last night! After said recording it was released.

Being the first person ever to document Coniontis vibrations on camera sure feels nice!

Here is the video:

More assorted news

 

I photographed the fully macropterous form of Gryllodes sigillatus a few days ago! Unlike most of the "rare" specimens I encounter, it is genuinely rare and not merely underdocumented-but-common. I kept seeing full macropters in my yard but failed to catch any until today (they kept jumping off). I managed to catch this one mainly because it barely jumped and seemed slightly weak (I felt bad for it, so I fed it a rice blob before releasing it).

I also managed to photo a semi-macropterous female (also rare) a while before this. Not posting my pics of it here, since they were of poor quality, but it looked just like a full macropter lacking the long needle-shaped hindwings. Its forewings were the same length as those on the full macropter though. 

Neither the semi-macropter nor full macropters ever used their wings in my presence by the way.

On an unrelated note, I made another trip to the Californian coast in hopes of finding some Xanthoria parietina. Once again I did not see a single foliose lichen of any sort; the whole place was coated in generic range/yellow/black/white crust lichens just like last time. Here is a pretty pic I took there though!

I go to AZ

(the view outside my hotel)

Here are some pics from my recent trip to Arizona! Sadly the trip itself was a disappointment - I came back emptyhanded because I saw nothing I wanted to take home. In fact, the trails I looked in were completely devoid of Marchantiophyta. I was also bored the whole time because I don't enjoy sightseeing very much.

Red Rock State Park:

Miller Visitor Center

Argia ludens male (these were abundant)

Unidentified skipper thingy

Eleodes longicollis

(who knew river mud could be so pretty)

Eleodes obscura sulcipennis

A member of the Stenomorpha marginata group; sadly dead

Miscellaneous pics:

I found this Polyphylla specimen sleeping in the open on an urban wall; it was probably unable to move to a safer location because nighttime light pollution (read: attraction to lamps) had rendered it too confused to do so. It sat on my arm unrestrained for the rest of the day since it was too drowsy to flee. I could not find a safe place to release it before night came, and once it was dark the scarab woke up and panicked all night (it presumably has a psychological need for flight). Fortunately I found a suitable release location the next morning.

(yes the lichens really were this color)

Solanaceae, presumably

(this was the only place I visited that didn't have reddish dirt)

Wild Shelfordella lateralis male (seemingly dying of pesticides)

Lygaeus

Sadly, none of these were Xanthoria parietina

Xanthoria or bust

As some of you know, I have been trying to get my hands on and culture a live specimen of Xanthoria parietina for several years now. This is because it has a combination of traits which makes it very useful, including:

- relatively rapid growth (reportedly up to 7 mm per yr, although this is still far slower than rates reported for Herpothallon/Cryptothecia)

- strong sun/dehydration tolerance

- ability to detoxify pollutants and use them as fertilizer

- large size (easier to manipulate and photograph)

- ability to grow on a wide variety of substrates, including plastic

- calciphily (it won't throw fits and die if given hard water)

- ability to tolerate lawn sprinklers (many lichens become injured if rehydration from a dry state is not preceded by a slow, gradual air humidity increase; sprinkler tolerance means that it can survive/grow even when no such gradual increase is present)

Unfortunately, it does not grow anywhere near me, which is why I have not acquired one yet. My attempts to get acquaintances to mail me some have also been wildly unsuccessful. So a few days ago I went on a trip to the coast, as it is often associated with coastal habitats*.

...I did not see a single foliose/fruticose lichen, although orange/yellow dot lichens and intertidal organisms were abundant. Even the ancient Spanish mission I visited (see pic above) had a rather pitiful lichen flora. Also, despite the abundant eye candy I was sad the whole time, as I do not believe in vacationing for sightseeing's sake.

I can't post about only my successes, can I? That would be biased and perhaps dishonest. Maybe you'll enjoy the eye candy more than I did. Here's an urchin I found on the beach:

Mesocentrotus franciscanus

*X. parietina seems to require salt to survive. However, it is not aquatic (it drowns if kept too wet) and in fact I believe its salt requirement is actually quite low. According to the literature, aerosolized salt from ocean breezes appears adequate for its needs (at least one paper also suggests that road salt may cause it to appear in non-coastal regions). So I imagine that the salt thing should not be too problematic for me if I acquire a specimen.

Cotinis adults are in season!

 I saw my first C. mutabilis of the year today! Unfortunately, I seem to have severely injured it by accident. It was dangerously close to flying into plastic and then dying of plastic entanglement, so I grabbed it and threw it away. For some reason it did not fly when thrown, and upon landing several of its tarsi had seemingly lost the ability to flex/bend. I was definitely not expecting that to happen, as healthy specimens do not generally refuse flight when thrown.

At least I compensated it with free brunch afterwards? It still seemed possibly moribund though. Oh dear.

Asterella gets fifteen minutes of fame

The Los Angeles Times featured me briefly on their plant Instagram! By the way, the specimen is still dormant because I am too sad (and afraid of molds) to rehydrate it.

Fun lichen paper

 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231809006_Growth_from_the_Centre_in_an_Umbilicate_Lichen

This isn't a particularly useful paper, but its description of how Lasallia pustules emerge and migrate from the thallus center like soap bubbles being blown by a machine is quite sublime and oddly amusing.

4/20 boring update

Asterella is dried up and thus dormant, because I got sick of having moldy wet dirt in my house. Sphaerocarpos is dead again.

I'm not sure I like dirt any more

The cactus potting soil I stored dry and seemingly in clean conditions for months began emitting a faint moldy odor as soon as I rehydrated it. The gravel in the Asterella californica cup has also developed a similarly mild but unpleasant odor over the past few months. Intriguingly the dead mushy parts of the Asterella itself have no visible or smellable microbial presence; I suspect its flesh contains natural antibiotics. Ironically, the dirt in the Sphaerocarpos jar had a pleasant nutty smell and no mold (despite being in an airtight humid container) when the Sphaerocarpos in it were still thriving. The nutty smell is gone now that the sphaers are decaying, of course, but I'm surprised the pleasant scent lasted for weeks under sopping wet conditions.

Also I got some new Sphaerocarpos to replace the dead ones. I touched the new ones with my hands after washing them in hard water, because I had no access to soft water at the time, and I suspect the calcareous residues from my hands may kill them eventually. So far it is still alive though.

Anyways, despite being in microbe-infested dirt, the Asterella seems to have increased its sprout size by a few more millimeters! I can't wait for the pandemic to end so I can give it a thorough sanitization and acquire some dirt that won't mold.