Darklings in Color!

Hello and welcome. 🙂

If you know anything about darkling beetles, you know that the vast majority of species (at least within the U.S) are plain black in color. This isn't too much of a shame as they often make up for it with fascinating shapes and sizes, BUT what if I told you I've actually managed to receive one of the few colorful varieties as of late? Read all about it down below.

Months ago, towards the start of the year, me and one of my first arthropod-enthusiast friends, TJ Ombrelle, were having a conversation and somehow a darkling beetle popped up. He had found some dead ones around his house, which he was rather quickly able to pin down a genus for. Some actual live ones turned up eventually and they were cultured with ease. I had said from the start that I'd love to work with some should they prove easy to breed, so when exactly that happened, it was joy to my ears. 😍 TJ's plan was to release his colony back into the wild once he had documented every life stage, but myself along with one other were very interested in breeding them. Because of this, he ended up just splitting the group between the two of us, so that the stock could go on in captivity. They arrived as scheduled and I unboxed it to find all 20+ Apsena sp. "Kuna" adults and possibly however many small larvae/eggs had survived! Let me tell you more about these Idahoans.

Apsena sp. "Kuna" is a Tenebrionid (darkling) beetle that has yet to be identified down to species level and was collected in Kuna, Idaho. Their elytra is a deep sort of navy blue color, while their legs are a burnt orange, and everything else besides the eyes, a plumb red. It is possibly the smallest beetle of it's kind that I have ever kept measuring in at only about 5 mm in length. Despite the size, their behavior of releasing potent defensive chemicals is right on par with their larger kin or even more heightened as they let loose countless times between unboxing and the photo shoot. LOL These really speed through life with their whole developmental cycle only taking 2-3 months to complete (of course, depending on temps).

I have my starter colony housed in a 23 oz. (actually the size of about 4 normal 32 oz. containers combined) cheeseball container with no lid to provide max ventilation. The substrate is coconut fiber, which I'm going to be keeping moist in the lower 3/4 to 2/3, dry in the top 1/4 to 1/3, and about 6 inches in depth. Besides that, there's four pieces of paper towel roll in there for hiding and a baby carrot for munching on.

OUT OF THE DARK AND INTO COLOR. 

Adults

Small larvae

Enclosure

I hope you all savored this read about these new additions to my lineup of darklings (which I'll have to post about in full soon)! But anyway, that'll be it for today and I'll meet you right where I always do - next post. 🙂