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.

My blood pressure goes up for the 99999th time

 

 

The willow worm is done ripening! Looks like we've an Iridopsis on our hands. Few moths seem to behave normally in enclosures smaller than room size so I'm gonna release it in the nearby suburbs tonight or something (unlike the hoppers it came from the suburbs so it'll survive there).

Dictyssa and Xerophloea are still doing ok but I should probably release the latter as I'm having trouble keeping them in an environment that's comfy for both them and their host, the host drops leaves indoors and I'm afraid the hopper will overheat outdoors.

The Graphocephala's preferred willow has also mysteriously dried up seemingly from rot (which is weird if you consider the big willow is still doing fine in microbe-infested swamp sludge), and now it's stressed and I'm stressed and because of inconvenient personal-life problems going on right now I can't go to the woods right now and release it. The dicty eggs were on that small willow too so I scraped them off and am vaguely hoping they don't die on me.

I'm also pretty miserable for the usual insect-unrelated reasons.

Hopper updates

One of the Dictyssa was female as I suspected! Caught it sticking eggs into willow leaves (strangely not in the midrib, in the sides) tonight. Also note that the egg is external (as opposed to being invisible embedded in the plant tissue):

Xerophloea have been moved to a locally nonnative malvaceous plant cutting, which they accepted. Willow and dodder were on the other hand not considered suitable hosts. No signs of oviposition from either yet.

White hopper turned out to be Graphocephala cythura

 

it's blue when teneral

Native here, but an obscure record mentions it having invaded Hawaii, which is concerning. While some invasive taxa are certainly under threat in their native ranges and G. cythura appears more or less unable to survive in the suburbs here (well, either that or occurs in low enough densities that I've never seen it) I don't think it's in much conservational danger.



Also let me vomit some generic photos of the aforementioned Xerophloea duo (note their close textural/color resemblance to Croton) because I've nothing better to do. I'm so bored, photography is so dull.

They're a pretty widespread species too but I'm keeping them around because it costs me nothing and cause I suspect they might be locally (if not globally) in danger.

Update: after hardening the blue has mostly gone away, it's green now.

Oh, and by the way, the willow worm's big now.

 

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.

Soft-chaparral hemipterans update

Caught 1 more D. obliqua (pictured above) yesterday (new total: 2), both specimens still feeding well on dodder.

Caught a pale green morph of what appears to be another X. peltata on the same excursion, both specimens motionless and apparently feeding well on Croton.

Caught weird pinstriped Croton associate weevil on the same excursion, seems to be doing well in the enclosure with the hoppers.

Scolops is not fleeing the hosts but kept shifting around between spots on the willow, and is now of its own volition on the Croton again (unclear if this is male matesearching or if something's still subtly wrong with the host hydration status or whatever it is); I did not find any additional specimens, so it has no mate.



Also of note is that I've noticed D. obliqua will lower their wings when frightened, that when only one of the two wings is raised it seems to be consistently the left one, as is the tendency among Elicini (side effect of brain lateralization?), and that voluntary (as opposed to alarm-induced) locomotion is at least sometimes accompanied by slow, monotonous up-and-down wing flapping movements reminiscent of tephritid wiggling. While I assume the wings mimic chewed holes in foliage, it is clear that breaking up the animal's outline can't be the reason (or at least the only reason) they're held raised, or else why would frightened animals lower them?

Tephritids use their wings as social signals but I've not seen my two dictys socially interacting so far (the wing-flapping observation occurred before I caught individual #2). Like the other hemipterans currently in my care they spend most of their time sitting still, as one might expect from an animal adapted to a low-nutrition diet. As I suspect they are male and female I might try and prod them into standing next to each other to see if they're interested in mating.

Update: prodded them into chemosensory and visual contact with each other. No detectable response.