I've got some spectacular news to share today as a follow up to the first part of the "Lubber Legacy" saga...…...let's just cut to the chase - IT HAS HAPPENED; I HAVE BABY LUBBERS!!! 😃 Quite unexpectedly indeed, upon walking into the invert room I noticed a bunch of odd-looking things sitting at the top of a 32 oz. cup. It took me a minute to realize it, but one of my egg masses had hatched! The reason for my surprisement was because I had thought that the egg masses had gotten a bit moldy (but it just turned out to be the overall substrate), so I was already a bit doubtful and then I also thought that they were supposed to hatch faster after being taken out of diapause. 😅 I counted 10 hatchlings; there very likely might have been an additional one or two that just never made it out from under the substrate as it looked that way, but I wasn't able to confirm. Interestingly, their stripes are orange at the moment, but they should turn yellow with their next molt or two. The egg mass that they hatched from was put into diapause on May 1st and hatched on September 27th, so overall things took just about 5 months.
I've taken the nymphs out of the egg cup and transferred them to a 32 oz. deli cup with a cloth lid since the discovery. Inside the cup they have a bunch of angled sticks to hang on and molt from along with some strands of paper towel that I closed in the lid. For their first meal I gave them some random greens and some moistened dog food, but it doesn't seem like they've really touched it as of yet. Anyway, here's some pics of them, an interesting visual, and their little setup!
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| R.microptera "Yellow" hatchlings |
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| A little visual of where the nymphs dug around the egg mass after hatching |
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| R.microptera "Yellow" temporary enclosure |
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