Birthday Earwigs - Ten Months Late

Hi Guys!
     With how busy last year was for me and my family, it's no surprise that I am pretty backed up with posts. Well......I realized that I was so backed up that I hadn't even gotten to post about the new and very exciting order of inverts I dove into for my 15th birthday this past year, earwigs! 😃
     Besides the extremely common Forficula auricularia (which I am easily able to find myself), there was really only one other species being bred in captivity and this was the one I chose, the goliath over commonly encountered earwigs, Euborellia arcanum. This whopping member of the genus Euborellia can reach slightly past 30 mm at largest, although its average adult body length of 26-28 mm is already bigger than most, if not all, earwig species within the U.S. Not to even mention the girth.
     To go along with the impressive size, they also sport a variety of coloration as they grow including brown, light orange, black, crimson red, and an electric yellow sort of coloration on the legs, which almost certainly signals the animal's toxicity to potential predators.
     And lastly, despite the significant aesthetic appeal of this species, it does also share a very intriguing behavior with most if not all other earwigs. The adult females will dig down under the substrate (sometimes against a wall of the enclosure) , create a small chamber, and lay their eggs in it. If it is in a visible spot, you will be able to watch the mother caringly guard and tend to the eggs over the course of a few weeks. 🙂 It is worth noting that while they will create nice chambers and such for egg-laying, they will also happily do so on the surface of the substrate under the cover of a hide.
     I started with thirteen of these guys last April, but during, I believe, a cleaning of the enclosure, I left all of them in an empty container only to come back to a horrible scene. Multiple individuals had already been eaten whole and a few were running around with half-eaten bodies or actually in the process of being consumed! 😧 Very unfortunately, I learned about their cannibalistic tendencies very well that day and was left with seven individuals after everything was said and done. ☹ But on the bright side, I also learned that this terrible behavior is pretty much non-existent in the actual enclosure (ie. in the presence of substrate to escape under) and ended up breeding them with ease! Up to date, I have a thriving colony of around 100 individuals. 🙂
     Their enclosure consists of a 16 qt. container fit with a single 1 inch ventilation hole on each end. The substrate is a moist mix of coconut fiber, coconut husk, sphagnum moss and cypress mulch with a couple pieces of bark for the hides.
Pics ahoy!

E.arcanum large nymphs/adults (Old Pics)

Adult E.arcanum (New Pics)

Adult E.arcanum compared to an approximately 5 inch marker (New Pics)

E.arcanum large nymphs/adults (New Pics)

E.arcanum large nymph/adult making a bad attempt to hide (New Pics)

E.arcanum large nymph/adult peaking out of substrate (New Pics)

Large nymph/adult E.arcanum possibly interacting with small nymph (New Pics)

Mid-sized E.arcanum nymph with small nymph (New Pics)

Small E.arcanum nymph (New Pics)

Freshly-hatched E.arcanum nymphs (New Pics)

E.arcanum eggs (New Pics)

Partially visible E.arcanum egg chamber (New Pics)

     Hopefully more of these wonderful and severely undercultivated insects will enter the hobby this year and make their presence known to the world of invertebrate breeders everywhere! 🙂
     I hope you all enjoyed the post and until we meet again, goodbye!