Living Keepsakes

Hello and Welcome! 😃

     Continuing with the recent theme of isopods, today I'll be featuring a couple neat species/localities that I collected on my last trip to Woodhaven Lakes (for the time being). Let's jump right in. 🙂

     If you have followed my blog for any considerable amount of time, you'll know that a very good portion of my finds have come from Woodhaven Lakes, a rural Illinois arthropod hotspot. After around a decade of having a property there as our vacation place and ,since joining the hobby, a couple years of collecting, we finally sold our little getaway. I don't have particularly good memories of passing the nights in the small, cold trailer, but the yard was definitely awesome. Me and my little siblings would play around in it often and it also held many interesting arthropod species that I had found nowhere else. The findability of awesome inverts was in no way just limited to the yard though and indeed you could find something neat almost anywhere in the resort. Some of the most memorable things that turned up there can be found in this post here and also this one. Many more neat finds lie scattered around my blog and countless others only live in my memories.

     For the reason of most intriguing inverts being hard to find anywhere but at Woodhaven, I took initiative to gather a couple target species in the last few visits we would make. Said targets were Cylisticus convexus and Gelastocoris oculatus. All except for one trip ended up being very minimally fruitful, due primarily to bad weather. However, as I eluded, there was one trip that delivered very nicely. It just happened to be the last drive we made out there and it was an exceptionally nice day compared to the rest. We got there and, if memory serves correctly, went directly to one of the lakes to see if I could find anything. I checked the waters edge and unfortunately there wasn't any Gelastocoris as I had hoped, but I did manage to cup some aquatic springtails. Next, we headed across the parking lot to an area that held a small stream (that connected to the river on the other side of the parking lot) and a pond. The stream is pretty much devoid of noticeable invert life and hard to get down to, so I didn't check it, but I did stake out the area around the pond and I'm glad I did. 😃 I lifted up a few pieces of bark and managed to uncover some particularly yellow-looking Armadillidium vulgare and a population of Trachelipus rathkii that contained an orange individual! I collected a group of the vulgare along with the orange rathkii and a few of the individuals that it was found with. While I was there I also saw some nice bark and decided to take a couple pieces with me. After that successful stop we continued to our property and although less eventful, I was very thankful to find and collect a nice group of Cylisticus convexus, one of the things I was looking for!

     Unfortunately, the water and debris I collected the aquatic springtails in quickly became rancid putting an end to the possibility of me culturing them. But besides them, I was able to get everything secured. 🙂 I ended up sending the rathkii to Alan Grosse so that he could try and isolate the orange morph and although things aren't going too bad, I hear that no results have been achieved as of yet. I held onto the other isopod though and so let's talk about them.

     I have cultured the isopod sometimes referred to as the Curly isopod on multiple occasions before, but still managed to have them fall out of my collection. I always loved that they were among the easiest of my isopods to breed and keep along with their dark brown, sometimes purple-ish color and those were the driving factors for me seeking them out again. They have already established themselves in my collection again with a couple dozen immatures already having been produced from my original individuals (many of which, if not all, being around still). At the moment I'm keeping them in a 64 oz. container with a decent amount of pinholes poked around the rim. They have a moderately moist substrate mix of compost soil, topsoil, cypress mulch, and perlite with a thin piece of bark for hiding under, a clump of moist sphagnum moss in one of the corners for moisture regulation, and a pile of leaves for both hiding and chowing down on.

Here are the pics. ⬇️

C.convexus

C.convexus enclosure

     I was actually already starting up a group of A.vulgare at the time that I collected those yellowish individuals at Woodhaven. The yellowish coloration has for the most part disappeared on them, but I'm still glad that I snagged them as their coloration is still a little odd for the species and they seem to be more vigorous than my other vulgare, consuming leaves and reproducing much faster. Granted this could just be due to a slighter larger group and better sex ratio, but until I can prove otherwise, I'll consider them sort of special and refer to them as Armadillidium vulgare "Woodhaven". I may take out the locality portion of the name and just add them to my original vulgare group if they don't prove to be unique though, we'll see. I'm keeping them in a 64 oz. enclosure with a bunch of pinholes poked around the rim. They have a pretty moist substrate mix of compost soil, topsoil, cypress mulch, and perlite with a couple pieces of eggcrate-ish material for hiding under, a clump of moist sphagnum moss in one of the corners for moisture retention, and a pile of dead leaves for both eating and hiding purposes.

Photos below!

A.vulgare "Woodhaven" adults

Young A.vulgare "Woodhaven"

A.vulgare "Woodhaven" adults with offspring

A.vulgare "Woodhaven" enclosure

     You might have noticed some tiiiiiiny, red mites in a couple of the pics of both the C.convexus and A.vulgare "Woodhaven"; I'm not sure how they got there and didn't notice them until the photo session, but they seem prevalent in both cultures and thankfully don't seem to be doing any harm. With that said, I'd like to thank you all for tuning into another addition of All About Arthropods and I'll see next time, goodbye!