Anticlimactic egg pics as was promised

 

Here's a pic of the remaining female. You can tell how much dirt it's eating just by looking at it.

And here're its eggs inside their capsule nest (which it makes by walking in circles for several hours while somehow extruding fiber pulp it's ingested).

The capsule itself has only one dirt wall (the other wall is the plastic wall of the vial, so I don't have a decent pic of the capsule exterior because it got squashed when I tried to remove it from the vial's wall, but I swear it looked like this). Not sure if E. elegans actually "broods" as per the caption though; my specimen abandoned its nests after their completion and it's conceivable elegans may desert its eggs in the same way too.

By the way, have I mentioned on here just how boring the animal is? Whenever it isn't in substrate that makes it restless and agitated, it sits around (usually underground, though it does surface approx. once every several days) and doesn't do much except slightly adjust its position every few hours and eat things occasionally. Some animals are highly secretive but active within their shelters, but this thing doesn't even do much when buried. In fact, that's one of the main reasons I regret impulse-grabbing it during that Arboretum trip (well, not exactly regret; more like "I knew it'd bore me and I'd not even get temporary enjoyment out of it, but I did it anyways because brains are irrational and I couldn't help myself"). The other reason, of course, is that arthropods are possibly conscious and thus an ethical liability. Asterella and Sphaerocarpos may exhibit an equal lack of behavior but at least they're plants and thus unconscious. And if I ever become affluent enough to finally do some fun Deep Research, I'd honestly have no idea where to start with the millipede (which is not to say that there aren't fascinating adaptions in its physiology), whereas with the worts I've already compiled a whole list of hypotheses to test.

Both of them turned out to be ovigerous females

Unfortunately today I had a meathead moment and unwittingly dumped one of the females in my yard because I thought I was holding an empty container. Felt so ashamed about it I had another mental breakdown (I do forgive myself, but still).

Also, here is a pic of the now-escaped one eating aquarium fish pellets (ingredients include fish meal + various grains and similar seeds) just for data's sake. It chewed that thing for hours. Blah blah another data point for "many detritivores love scavenging carrion", blah, etc.

Not that all detritivores are like that; Blaste oregona seems to refuse anything except some sort of unidentifiable bark dust (which is why I released the barklice a day after catching them; after the release they instantly began gorging on said dust and ceased their restlessness). Though I bet the lice'd still eat conspecifics dead of natural causes.

I have two millipedes now and they look like this

 

Long story short, I was at the Los Angeles County Arboretum looking for accidentally imported Marchantiophyta in the greenhouse and impulsively caught these pyrgodesmids(?) instead (I could not find any marchantiophytes). Or maybe they're Haplodesmidae.

I'm not really even interested in millipede husbandry any more! How does one get overexcited enough to impulse-acquire things one doesn't even slightly want? What's wrong with me?

Anyways they've been doing well in potting mix but seem annoyingly specific about what potting mix they consider acceptable. Even microwaving the one they like (and then  reinoculating the clean substrate with their presumably favored microflora) seems to induce tantrums I can only seem to stop by putting them back in the unsanitized dirt.

Update: Derek Hennen says it looks haplodesmid.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

SISYPHUS ROLLED THEIR BOULDER UP A HILL. THEIR LIFE HAD BEGUN LONG BEFORE THE MAN WHO BORE THEIR NAME - THEIR AFTERLIFE WOULD CONTINUE UNTIL THE END OF TIME OR THE END OF TYRANNY [WHICHEVER CAME FIRST]. BY NOW, THEIR FACE WAS A MANIFOLD, EVERY PIECE OF ITS FLESH THE VISAGE OF A DIFFERENT INDIVIDUAL WHO HAD CHALLENGED AND LOST TO THE NATURAL ORDER. THEIR ARMS HAD GROWN SIMILARLY MULTITUDINOUS, YET STILL THEY COULD NOT OUTWIT THE INFAMOUS STONE.

ONE OF THEIR FACEPIECES NOTICED A LICHEN UPON THE STONE. "THE ONTOLOGICAL AND ECOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS ARE FASCINATING," THOUGHT THE PIECE TO ITSELF.

BUT THE TWO HOLOBIONTS ROLLED DOWN THE SLOPE. TOGETHER.

Comparison

 

2 different localities from same county. The bottom one's near Azusa River Wilderness Park's entrance; the top, a short distance beyond the Mount Wilson Trailhead entrance. The Azusa specimen is the same one pictured on a previous post.

I'm running a common-garden experiment to see how much of their phenotype variation is genetic and how much is environmentally induced.

Edit: oh god I think the top one's apical notch has died, looks like it's time to get a new sample. 

Not that it's incapable of making new notches (but when the preexisting one dies the new ones come out on ventral branches, and I can't figure out a 100% objective way to distinguish ventral branches induced by clonal regeneration from ventral branches of a genetically different specimen that happened to have been hiding underneath as a spore or something. Sometimes two overlapping specimens are appressed + affixed to each other so tightly they look like they're part of the same flesh even though they aren't.)

Another intriguing observation

 

I discovered the drought-stress phenotype of Marchantia polymorpha (above) is uncannily similar to the normal wild phenotype of a lot of aridland Marchantiophyta. In particular, note the dying sides and unusually large fraction of dead rear here; compare to Asterella images from my previous posts.

In a way it's kinda unsurprising, but on the other hand I suppose it's pretty weird Asterella evolved to look (and possibly act) half-dead by default, know what I mean?

The ventral surface of Asterella can iridesce

 

Who knew? 

Here is its dorsum by the way (I assume the yellow crumbs are pollen from some bush or someth- edit: wait a minute, just realized the thing has macroscopic spores! I shook a sporophyte repeatedly and they kept falling out.)

Followup to below

I've been seeing large aggregations of various synanthropic native and invasive aphidophages (golly gee, what a lot of adjectives) in the wilderness, but only near weedy mustard megaclusters. Presumably they are murdering various mustard aphids.

More "pristine" habitat remains low in insect density, with a few exceptions.

Random observation

 Despite the co-occurence of drought-relieving rains and plentiful host plants (many mass-blooming), insects (aside from A. mellifera and a few other ecologically aggressive spp.) continue to be sparse at both Millard Canyon and Sante Fe Dam Recreation Area. I don't think it has to do with pesticides either.

A few hypotheses:

- Low insect density may be natural (this is less unreasonable than it sounds; there are high numbers of self-fertilizing native plants present, and the Eleodes of the dam are suspiciously violent towards conspecifics).

- The rains may not have been enough; insect populations there only rebound after many consecutive nondrought years.

- The rains were enough but habitat destruction is so bad that rain is no longer a population-limiting factor.

"Three papers on insect tameness": a followup

 One paper on insect obliviousness.

https://doi.org/10.3390%2Finsects9040179

Their findings make sense, considering how a number of non-lepidopteran bugs in the hobby have trouble finding food in large cages.

Navarretia hamata has also decided to be pretty

 

Flower 1 opened Feb 15. Flower 2 (directly above it in this image) opened today, and in fact did so exactly 30 minutes or less after I took this photograph!

The other two hamata currently in my tray have no visible flowers as of this writing. All three've bolted some time ago, though.

Note 2 self: how to rule out atractyl?