What Nightmares are Made of

Hello and welcome. 🙂

Over the course of the last year and a half, I've experienced what I hope to be the worst hardships that I'll ever endure in my time keeping and breeding arthropods. This real-life nightmare started with just a few simple words - "How into darklings are you?".

Around April of last year, my original arthropod pal, TJ Ombrelle (Invertebrate Dude), got in touch with me and proceeded to ask a rather surprising question. He wanted to know if I'd be interested in taking his whole darkling beetle collection off his hands for a slim price. I believe I had already known that he was leaving the hobby at the time, but this did not do much to mitigate the shock. I ecstatically accepted and, since it was around my birthday at the time, my parents decided to take care of the cost. I received them probably within a week and it was an extremely joyous sight to see such numbers of darkling beetles in so many varieties. In all, I took in a couple dozen Coelus ciliatus larvae/eggs/adults, 40+ Eleodes osculans adults/larvae, 1 adult Alobates pensylvanica, 4 adult Eleodes acuticauda, a couple dozen Eleodes tribulus adults, around a dozen Embaphion muricatum adults, dozens of Coniontis sp. "CA" adults/larvae/eggs, and a few dozen Meracantha contracta larvae. As fast as there was jubilation, there began tragedy...….

A couple months in, things that should have been reproducing were not and things that shouldn't have been dying were. An entomopathogenic fungus had infiltrated my collection. Unfortunately, at the time, I was unaware of how bad things would get. Each species/culture ended up going down a different path, but one destination they tended to arrive at was death. Here are their individual stories in more detail.

The Coniontis sp. "CA" were perhaps the first species I noticed problems with. The adults arrived with many larvae, even small ones, indicating that they should have still been laying eggs. Weeks, months went on with nothing. I started noting individuals of every life stage dying and that's when I was assured something was up. It was confirmed that a harmful fungus was the culprit and one of my friends graciously provided directions on defeating it. I followed what he said and everything appeared fine after a while. But in life's wicked ways, I would find out months down the line that the fungus had apparently managed to cling to at least one specimen. All the old troubles returned and the colony ultimately had to be euthanized.

The M.contracta arrived already rather doused in grain mites (as I was notified they would be), so they were at a disadvantage with things from the start. Because of the grain mites, I kept them in the corner of my invert room, away from the other things. Their enclosure was rather small and thus when I didn't remove individuals in time for pupation, I imagine they were readily cannibalized by their brethren. I have to believe they were touched at least some by the fungus however as when the population had dwindled to an acceptable level for individuals to survive pupation, still not a single one was noted to have reached adulthood. Additionally, when they first arrived, a dead individual was found in the shipping container, sprouting with fungi.

The C.ciliatus were not confirmed to have been effected by the fungus. I main issue I ran into with these guys was moisture regulation. I was having immense trouble with making sure their 100% sand substrate stayed moist in the appropriate levels/areas due its odd make-up. It would dry out faster than other substrates, moistened areas would not change color very dramatically, so it was hard to tell when things were still moist, and they would become very firm and repel moisture to other, unintended areas quickly after being inoculated with water. Because of these issues, only a few larvae made it to adulthood before the colony crashed completely.

The E.acuticauda have a mixed story. My original adults produced many larvae, but before any pupated, I found a couple dead for reasons I'm not fully sure of. Surprisingly, I was able to rear about 50 individuals to adulthood, but then things increasingly didn't seem right. Over the course of months, an adult or two would randomly drop out of the population and no eggs were being produced whatsoever. These odd happenings along with the fact that they had never undergone the fungal treatment led me to euthanize the colony.

The E.muricatum have done pretty well throughout all of this. They pushed on through the eye of the fungus-issue's storm and have seemingly dodged the bullet.....possibly until recently. A number of adults have passed throughout my time keeping them as they're very sensitive to a lack of moisture for any period of time, but they seem to be going in larger numbers now. Resultingly, I don't have many left. On another note, I haven't been able to make it up to the invert room to perform husbandry as often as I have before, so this could also account for the extra deaths. The status of the larvae would offer a much better look into the health of the colony with this particular species though, so I will try to give them a thorough check soon.

The E.tribulus went down hastily. They produced some of their own larvae, but not many made it to adulthood before individuals of all life stages started dropping. I gave away the majority of what was left to a couple friends of mine and kept a few for myself. As far as I know, all individuals have now passed between the 3 of us.

The single A.pensylvanica lived just about the best life out of any of the things I received. Before it arrived at my house, I already had an adult that I had found in my yard. It lived happily with it's little companion for months before passing away almost certainly due to old age, and the other individual died only a few months ago seemingly from the same cause.

In addition, I ended up acquiring some Eleodes goryi and Eleodes tenuipes from different sources. The goryi colony thrived for a few months (thankfully, I was able to distribute them to a few people during that time), but had to be euthanized in the end for probable entomopathogenic fungi contamination. I have 2 of my original 3 tenuipes adults left, but unfortunately they're both females, so the hopes of culturing them seem to be over. They produced many larvae while they were fertile, but since this was the first time someone has attempted to rear the species in captivity, only 4 made it to adulthood with half dying shortly after. Of course, I wouldn't completely rule out the fungus factoring into things as well. In my insistence to, at long last, rid the aforementioned arthropod plague from the room, I euthanized the 2 offspring that had matured healthily since there was a very real chance they could have been carrying it.

As for the spark that started this blaze of death, I have always sterilized any foreign materials that I plan to offer my arthropods for the reason of keeping potential problems to a minimum, yet I've learned that, at the time, this was not the case with TJ. Thus, in all use of logic, I can say that the initial spores of this bloody fungus did not come from my collection or enclosure materials. None of this havoc was the work of intention though and he has apologized more than enough, so we're in as good of spirits as before this took place. Heck, the fungus was not even showing external effects to the species at the time of the shipment! This post was never about blaming anyone anyways, but rather simply describing this massive event for my life and collection.

I sincerely hope none of you other arthropod enthusiasts out there ever experience the horrors of what I've detailed today with your own animals. Happy entomopathogenic fungus-free collections and I'll meet you right where I always do - next post. 🙂