THE TRADE: A Year in the Making Pt. 2

WELCOME. 😀

If you missed part one of this two-part series, go and check it out here!!! It contains the majority of the species in this transaction and explains all the craziness that went on before it was finally completed. As for this part, it deals with Armadillidium vulgare "Orange Dalmatian" prototypes, Armadillidium vulgare "Orange Vigor", Embaphion cf. contusum, and Porcellio scaber "Spottergeist".

Wow, it's weird to even be typing this up. LOL This post is about a trade which took a year to complete, but posting about it took more than another year! Whenever I've been delayed in posting for lengthy periods like this, you can guarantee it's been because of camera problems and/or school. This time it was both of those things as well as me attempting to regain my online presence in other parts of the arthropod cyberworld during the last couple weeks. I have one year of high school left and I'll be trying to manage my time better so that it's no longer an excuse, but no guarantees. After that, I guess we'll just have to see how things go. It's a goal of mine to keep my blog up to date on my collection at all times, but honestly, I don't know how realistic that'll be for the few upcoming years. Enough with that chatter though, here's what you guys actually came for. ⬇️

Armadillidium vulgare "Orange Vigor" is an amazing morph of the Common Pill Bug that I first received over two years ago now and posted about here (where you can read a thorough description of it). It seems that on my first try either my husbandry was very faulty or, more likely, I received individuals that were all the same sex because I never got any mancae from them. This time around, things went muuuuch better. 😀 I don't remember quite how many I started with, but from those individuals has bloomed hundreds!!! I am keeping these guys in a 128 oz., completely-sealing container with a rather high amount of ventilation provided through pinholes on the lid. They have a substrate mix of compost soil, top soil, perlite, and cypress mulch, which I keep lightly moist and top with some dead leaves. Their hide is a piece of egg crate and there is a clump of moist sphagnum moss in one of the corners of the enclosure for moisture regulation.

Pictures, PICTURES, PPIICCTTUURREESS.

Larger individuals

Smaller individuals

Mixed-size individuals

Enclosure

Armadillidium vulgare "Orange Dalmatian" is a rather new morph that came on the scene within the last couple years. It is the result of a cross between "Orange Vigor" and "Magic Potion" looking exactly like the latter minus the black spots, which are exchanged for orange. Said spots only come in once they're about half-grown, which I imagine is a shared characteristic with "Magic Potion". I didn't ask for them, but Kyle included about 7 prototypes of this morph in my package. He was early enough in the isolation process that he wasn't sure they were stable yet, but things looked promising. Now that they're grown up, it looks to me like the orange spotting is a bit darker than it should be to where it looks basically like brown. Their growth has also revealed something else that I didn't notice when they were younger - one of the individuals actually has a nearly completely white eye with only a small patch of color in the middle reminiscent of the eye of a human. 😮 This would be a compelling characteristic to isolate if it was possible and assuming that it didn't affect the isopods' vision. I'm not exactly sure what happened, but for some reason there were multiple die-offs that occurred from the time I received them to now and thus I'm only left with three. I can't remember if I have both sexes, but hopefully so!

BEWARE: Spotty Bois Ahead

Large individuals

Normal eyes compared to eye of odd individual

Enclosure

Noooow, oh boy now, we have Porcellio scaber "Spottergeist". This is something which is considered to be a morph by some people and not a morph by others. As you can imagine, this has caused some rather heated conversations. I think the issue people were having was that basically the three examined colonies were all showing different things. One was showing pure white individuals, one (mine) was showing white individuals with pinkish/brownish eyes and a few with "Dalmatian" patches, and one was showing all of these. Kyle Kandilian, the founder of the morph, had this to say on the morph's identity: "Spottergeist", simply put, are white out dalmatians. Two simple recessives (or nearly so as most "simple recessives" in isopods tend to pop up in the F1 offspring of well-established lines with definite genetic history) in one isopod both responsible for pigment distribution/reduction. This leads to a cleaner, crisper white than in simple white outs alone which tend to yellow particularly with age. He also had this to say on the reason for the "Dalmatian" popping up in some of the colonies:  Originally, one or two dalmatians did pop up; this is to be expected considering, once again, that this line is comprised of individuals with double homozygous "recessive" mutations; even if these were allowed to persist in the colony due to the founder effect the dominant phenotype would always be "Spottergeist" as all presenting dalmatians in the colony would certainly be heterozygous for "White Out". As for the white individuals with colored eyes appearing, Kyle suggests that temperature may trigger the eyes to change color, but I honestly think he may have just released members of his group before they were properly isolated. Since all of this, I have sent out the majority of the colony off to a friend and gave the rest to my mom who cultures isopods as well. The reasons: mainly, I wanted to replace them in my collection with P.scaber "White Out" but, at the time, I also didn't want anything to do with all that naming nonsense. This is not to say that I didn't get a few pictures of the main phenotype in my colony. 😛 :  

I present to you: the worlds most highly-debated isopod!!!

Large individuals (orange coloration caused by recently-consumed food)

Small individual (orange coloration caused by recently-consumed food)

Mixed-size individuals (orange coloration caused by recently-consumed food)

Sadly, during a mega darkling beetle heath-crisis that occurred a while ago, the Embaphion cf. contusum larvae perished before they could mature and before I could even get a single picture of them. ☹️ Their appearance was basically identical to that of E.muricatum larvae though, so if you want to see what they looked like, here ya go. 

I hope you guys got some enjoyment out of this post and that it marks the point in the blog's history where posting consistency can pick back up at least remotely close to where it used to be at the beginning. I wish to see you soon right where I always do - next post!