I obtain more Physciella chloantha

 Wish me luck! Hopefully they do not die on me again.

Happy holidays!

 I finally got a pic of my Porcellio laevis male!

I obtain one (1) isopod

 A few nights ago I was doing laundry and saw a very large (larger than 1cm) isopod running across my garage! Upon closer inspection it was neither the ubiquitous Armadillidium nor the (less common but hyperabundant in some microhabitats) pruinose Porcellionides. I strongly suspect it is a male Porcellio laevis specimen but have not bothered to identify it yet. Update: it is indeed a male laevis!

I lost my phone again, so photos coming later.

I swear I'm not dead ye- oh wait

News: the inchworm depupated successfully on Nov. 6! It was Chrysodeixis includens. I dumped the moth on someone's Lantana bush shortly after it molted. Interestingly it was prettier than I thought it would be; I didn't realize it was reflective like bronze/silver satin; the sheen is less apparent in photos. I think I did a somewhat good job of capturing the pleasant coloration here though.

The Nyctoporis carinata female adult I sent Hisserdude has recovered from shipping stress and is still alive in a box somewhere in his house. The larvae at my house are doing well in garden soil and eating assorted vegetables happily. They are now large enough to photograph! Some individuals have very dark brown anteriors and others of the same size have pale orange anteriors but all of them are creamy white and puffy on the rest of their body. They also have sparse hair bristles over their bodies but this isn't visible here. Here is a pic, interestingly it is currently the only online photo of one in existence:

They are slower at walking than both Tenebrio and Zophobas and regularly engage in peristaltic contractions when locomoting (T and Z larvae only seem to peristalse when being grabbed or in tight spaces). They also flop with extreme violence if dug up, much more so than T/Z; however once finished flopping they stop moving for a while. They will make no attempt to rebury themselves for several minutes unless the substrate is vibrating, just like some dung scarabs. If the vibration stops they immediately freeze again. Of course once the several minutes have passed they will dig, vibrations or no vibrations. They cannot dig quickly if dug up, but oddly if feeding on vegetables with only their heads sticking out they can retract just as quickly as Z/T can when frightened.

Unfortunately the Cotinis mutabilis both died during shipping.

Nyctoporis arrives!

Hisserdude has successfully acquired my specimen, here are some pretty macro shots he took of it!

An inchworm pupates at me

prepupal larva in finished cocoon

Found this noctuid on my floor on Oct. 24, it ate a tomato leaf that night and started producing a cocoon the next morning. Currently it is a bright green pupa.

larva several hours before cocoon construction

Several bugs vanish from my inventory

Manduca sexta died several days ago. In life it kept drooling and getting leaf sludge on its face/legs when eating, and like a starving mealworm it was suspiciously shortbodied. These are highly unusual symptoms of disease, normally infected specimens begin flopping about uncoordinatedly and vomiting; mine did not show any obvious signs of distress. A few days before it died it lost most of its appetite (it did still eat hours before perishing though) and just stopped moving and eventually turned limp, but without rotting or liquefying. Also unusual. Pretty sure it caught a pathogen in the wild, because it was already short and stout when I first laid my eyes upon it.

The Nyctoporis carinata female was sent to Hisserdude. He should prolly write a blog post soon if it makes it to his house alive.

I'm also currently mailing out my male Cotinis duo.

The only specimens I currently have left are the Nyctoporis larvae, which unlike the adult are too small to be mailed.

I go into caterpillar debt

Last morning I found some Manduca sexta caterpillars on a half-dead tomato bush. "Why not play w them for a while", I thought to myself.

I played w them and dumped three of the four back onto the bush after a while.

The fourth one (which has an unusually large quantity of black stripes by the way) got its horn tip broken during handling and began leaking alarmingly large quantities of hemolymph from the injury site. I blame myself to some degree for this, I kept the caterpillars a bit too close to each other and one of the others probably bit or tore its horn accidentally. Not sure how it happened though, I had a feeling such a thing was going to happen and tried to prevent it before it even started but somehow it happened anyways.

As compensation for the unethics I am keeping it in a jar for a while, where microwasps are guaranteed not to oviposit in it and I can stuff its face with tasty tomato lumps. Although the animal seems to have difficulty sealing the leak (it has continued exuding hemolymph droplets from its horn intermittently throughout yesterday and today, especially when I am handling it during container cleaning), its health has not been significantly affected at all, which is good.

Anyways, here's the captive specimen I guess.

A pretty picture

 I'm not actually a fan of photographing pretty things for its own sake, but many of you seem to enjoy my photography a lot so here's a pic of my brownish C. mutabilis male being fashionable I guess. The less brown one fell straight into the watermelon juice (how can their motor skills be so poor, sheesh) and wouldn't hold still when it crawled out of the sugar puddle.

First N. carinata larva found!

 Need I say more?

Deformed Female presumably dies

The deformed female C. mutabilis specimen ran away a few days ago and hasn't been seen since, I blame my low sanity (and resulting lack of energy) for causing this. It's probably starved to death by now.

Since flightless mutabilis specimens seem to be perpetually sad when not busy feeding/sleeping perhaps it was better off dead anyways [sigh].