Mordax Hunt and Miscellaneous Updates

Part of the reason I've been updating so infrequently (aside from losing the household's good camera) was because the end of my senior year at OSU was rearing its ugly head -- but classes are over, and I graduate a week from today, so I hope to update more frequently. I also plan on getting the camera fixed (or buying a new one) once I put my degree to use for employment . . . though that may be a while.


Mordax Hunt

The second annual BugZoo camping trip was last weekend. Last year I found the scorpions featured in this post, and as we booked the same campground, I hoped to catch a few more this year. I had also been contacted by a researcher in the Midwest interested in doing a developmental study on this species who had requested that I collect a few gravid females for him.

The first night of blacklighting was at the same spot we found the specimens last year, and like last year, we didn't find much. Just five small juveniles. Coming back a second night, we looked a little farther along the road, where it was more of a cliff face than a talus slope, and we hit the jackpot! Fourteen specimens, including the four females I needed. The majority were hiding in cracks and crevices along the cliff face -- a few got away because they disappeared into cracks between huge pieces of rock that we couldn't possibly move. We probably saw at least twenty that night.

The count for the whole trip: five adult females (four gravid), five adult males, five immature females, five immature males. Another BugZoo member who provided the blacklight kept the non-gravid adult female (who stung him when he collected her, so we figured they were meant to be), two of the adult males, and three of the immatures. I sent the four gravid females to the researcher and gave the BugZoo a male and female subadult pair. I kept the remainder for my personal collection. It's nice to have a few more males, as I only had one prior to this.

(On a side-note, if anyone reading this is concerned about over-collecting: as I mentioned, there were a number that got away before we had a chance to collect them, and there were likely many more hiding beneath rocks that we never even saw -- our collecting was only by sweeping the blacklight around the area and overturning only a handful of the hundreds of rocks beside the road.)


Miscellaneous Updates

A friend of my fiancee's who lives near Phoenix routinely finds Arizona bark scorpions (Centruroides sculpturatus) in and around her home. She was gracious enough to agree to ship them to me after I sent her a box full of vials and some shipping funds. To date, she has sent me two males of the aforementioned species, one Vaejovis spinigerus, and one Hadrurus arizonensis (missing the movable finger of one chela, which makes for interesting feeding observations). I'm hoping she finds a female bark scorpion; I'd love to have a little community of these guys.

On the bark scorpion note, the professor who accompanied me on a mordax hunt last month is going to be visiting Arizona later this month and has offered to collect some scorpions for me. He seems genuinely excited about the prospect, especially after seeing the H. arizonensis I recieved.

My Centruroides vittatus seems to have reabsorbed the embryos again. I think I should just keep my eyes peeled for a cheap male.

I fed the majority of my scorpions last night. My Tityus stigmurus readily accepted prey, which was somewhat of a relief, because none have molted in several months and didn't seem to be growing much. They often panic when offered prey. My cave spider (Damon sp.) also ate a large cockroach -- she always worries me because she waits until I'm not looking before eating, so I never know if she eats. It doesn't help that she's such a skinny species.

The Antrodiaetus pacificus I found in April has excavated a sizeable burrow in her container -- it runs along the bottom so I can see her hiding out quite well. No eggsac as of yet.