Videos, Emperor Not Mature

So it seems I was incorrect when I earlier stated that one of my male P. imperator matured - I flooded them out of their burrows tonight and still saw three subadults. I'm guessing the exuvium I found was an older one that had been pushed out of a burrow.

In other news, I uploaded several videos to YouTube last month and never posted them here. There's several of my attempts at mating Uroctonus mordax as well as some clips of second-instar Centruroides sculpturatus on the female's back.

They can be found at my YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/mrmordax

Uroctonus mordax Spermatophore

I brought the spermatophore in to work on Wednesday and got a few closeups under the microscope. Very interesting and bizarre.

The larger version of this picture is available here, and a few more shots can be found in this gallery.

I've also uploaded several videos from Tuesday night's attempts to my YouTube account, including one of male D's rejection.

Notes, Part II

Male B, female 3:
Male observed sexually stinging female. Following morning, no spermatophore found. Pair separated, will attempt again.

Male C, female 4:
Spermatophore found in morning. Pair separated.

Notes

So I don't forget what happened tonight.

Uroctonus mordax mating attempts:

Male B, female 3:
Male approached female under bark, male later upside down hanging from bark, pair later upside down, no promenade observed, male coaxed female onto bark. Upon examination for spermatophore, pair separated. Male later returned under bark, last seen as both under bark (male's rear protruding), cannot tell if pedipalps are grasped. Will leave overnight and examine for spermatophore in morning.

Male C, female 4:
Male initially very confused about where to grasp female; wrong pedipalp and leg, metasoma and leg, both pedipalps wrong while sitting astride female. Eventually gave female a brief sexual sting in the membrane behind the left chela. Unsuccessful sexual sting behind right chela followed by extended sting behind left chela (greater than ten minutes). After this observed extended promenade a deux -- sometimes grasping one pedipalp, sometimes both, a few instances of cheliceral kisses on the part of the male observed as well. Male walked both across provided bark and bare substrate. No spermatophore observed as of yet. Will leave overnight and examine for spermatophore in morning.

Male D, female 5:
Male did not notice female's burrow initially. When directly introduced, female came partway out. Apparent standoff ensued, with both specimens metasomas raised and periodically waving pedipalps (video forthcoming). Female briefly grasped male's pedipalps. Pair separated to prevent injury; male now believed to be large subadult as opposed to initial assumption of small adult.

Centruroides sculpturatus:
Several juveniles wandering off female. Majority swept from female's back prior to moving her to a separate container. Will hopefully separate all second instars tomorrow evening. Current brood size estimated at >20.

Daring First Instar

The first instar U. mordax that left mom's back early made it to 2I successfully. (S)he just took a day longer than the rest of the brood. I've named this one Dr. Livingstone.

I have a few pics of the molting, but the camera I was using just isn't up to the old DSLR's abilities. So here's a picture of one of the other broods molting to second instar. Some have molted, some haven't, and a couple are in the process of molting.

All Those Babies . . .

. . . sure take a long time to feed.


My original estimate of 160 was actually spot-on. 70 Vaejovis spinigerus and 90 Uroctonus mordax, although two U. mordax died shortly after molting to second instar. I've given a few away and I'm open to selling all of the V. spinigerus and up to half of the U. mordax, but no one's responded to my ads.

I'd like to track the growth and development of the ones I plan on keeping -- that's why some have labels indicating which female they came from.

I have two remaining U. mordax females that look suspiciously pudgy. Hmmm . . .

Myriad of Births

"Update more frequently" . . . HA! Well, at least my dad gave my fiancee his decent point-and-shoot, so I no longer have an excuse to not take pictures.

My former professor returned from Arizona with a handful of Vaejovis spp., the largest of which appeared to be a heavily gravid V. spinigerus (or Hoffimanus spinigerus, if you're in the Soleglad and Fett camp). More on her later.

Two weekends ago I was preparing to leave for a family reunion. Friday afternoon I checked on one of my U. mordax females (collected May 1 with professor et al) to show a visiting guest, only to discover she had given birth. Returning home on Sunday evening revealed two more from the same trip had followed suit. By Friday, all four collected May 1 were carrying broods. A quick check also revealed that the large Vaejovis from Arizona also had a pile of young on her back.

Based on the one brood I experienced last summer, I estimated that the first of this year's would molt to second instar on Monday (yesterday). I surprised myself by being correct.

First brood discovered:

Molting to second-instar yesterday morning:

Second brood discovered:

The general consensus is that first instars are doomed without mom. This little guy from brood #2 decided to prove that wrong. He's still fine after having been away from the burrow for four days.

Third brood discovered (this female sealed herself in and burrowed to the bottom of the tank -- fortunately she cleared out an area against the bottom so I could photograph her):

Fourth brood discovered:

And the Vaejovis -- this species is known for having broods of 60 or more young.

In addition to all of these, I have three more female U. mordax. Two of these look like they may be gravid. One spent all winter with a male (recently died, assumed to have been old age) and one was collected at the end of last summer from Detroit. I'm fairly sure that populations from the Cascade Mountains give birth later in the year than those collected in the Coast Range, so we'll have to wait and see what she does.

I also have a friend whom I gave a female on another collecting trip in May. He told me she's looking fatter, and I suspect he'll give me any offspring rather than deal with them himself. Current estimate of young in my possession is 160; if I get young from the other females, my estimate would rise to 235.

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.

Another Uroctonus mordax Hunt

After showing a professor of mine a U. mordax and letting him hold it, he got excited enough to want to go catch some. On top of that, his youngest daughter is a budding bugoholic and also got excited at the prospect of finding scorpions. So, tonight we headed off to my favorite scorpion-hunting site in Oregon -- myself, my professor, his wife, and their three kids.

I directed them to a pile of old plywood that I'd found a male / female pair under the previous fall. While chatting about how to find them, lifting up the second piece of plywood yielded our first specimen: an adult female. I couldn't believe how excited everyone was, but it's always fun the first time you see a scorpion just sitting out there in the wild, glowing under your blacklight. I handed off the BL to my prof. and moved the scorpion to a vial.

In the same pile of plywood, a few minutes later, we turned up another female. Everyone was understandably excited, finding two so close together. We had now tied this pile's yield compared to prior expeditions.

Nearly finished with this pile, we flipped over one long piece to discover not one, but TWO females hiding beneath! After much shuffling of vials, we caught both of them, only to discover another female hanging out between the two others. The count so far: five adult females, one for each vial I'd brought.

The pile was exhausted so we headed up the hill to check a couple other spots I'd found scorpions at before. We packed a few napkins around those we'd already collected in case we had to double up on vials. After much rock-flipping and log-turning I eventually located a feisty juvenile under a piece of bark on the side of a hill. My professor's daughters thought it was cute for being so much smaller.

Climbing back down a hill a few minutes later I happened to sweep my light in the path I was about to step and found ANOTHER, out in the open! This one was a little smaller, possibly a subadult. My prof's family had already headed back to the truck with the vials, so he held onto her while we walked down. As luck would have it, randomly sweeping my light across the hill beside the road as I walked by revealed a glint of bright green. Yet another scorpion, this time a male hanging out in his burrow. I kept watch as I waited for someone to return with a vial.

Before tonight, the total number of scorpions I'd found here was six. Tonight's collection alone totaled EIGHT!

Final count: five adult females (all of them fat enough to suggest they're gravid), one adult male, one unsexed juvenile, and one male subadult.

One adult female and the male went to my prof's daughter to keep. If his other daughters still want one after the novelty wears off, they might get another one or two.

Pics up soon, hopefully.

Edit: Here be the pics!

Definitely time to get the DSLR fixed.

The four females I kept, along with the baby male:


The subadult male . . . he's got a real attitude!



Three of the ladies. You can see that they're pretty fat in this pic.


And a shot of "junior."

More babies on the way?

So I know I haven't updated in a long time -- mainly 'cause our SLR died in December and I prefer to provide pictures when I update. I've had a few deaths, a few molts, etc. since the last update.

But I checked on the communal U. mordax tank today and thought I saw embryos through the tergites of one of my females while she was stinging her prey. Huzzah! The last brood I had was in July, so it will probably be a few months.

That reminds me -- I've been heating / humidifying / feeding my female C. vittatus. She's definitely reformed the embryos but refuses to pop.

Ultra-short U. mordax update

Four of the five I gave away have now been confirmed as dead.

Roughly half of the ten that I kept have now molted to third instar.

U. mordax molt to 3I, new T. stigmurus

The first Uroctonus mordax from July's brood molted to third instar this week. The molt went from Monday night into Tuesday morning, and these photos were taken on Saturday. This is at an age of approximately three months.


Apparently one of the five I gave away molted the same night but didn't survive -- after speaking with the owner it seems conditions may have been too dry. Three of the five I gave away have now died; the other two I haven't heard about since passing them on to other hobbyists.

A couple of the others look almost ready to molt as well. One or two don't look anywhere near it and don't seem very interested in prey.

In other news, I recently got five third-instar Tityus stigmurus from a friend of mine in Texas. These guys are parthenogenetic and communal as adults, so I shouldn't have any problem getting a community up and running.

U. mordax Community

Yet another post about my favorite scorpion . . .

I finally reached one of my scorpion goals by setting up a community of this species: one male and five females collected in different areas of Oregon. The male and two of the females were those featured in this post, one female is the one featured in this post, one was the largest featured in this post, and the final female was collected in Eugene in 2007.

Here is the tank in its entirety:

Here's that stone on the right side at a different angle, to show one of the hides I provided:

I believe this is the female caught on Cougar Reservoir and the female that had a brood this summer:

And here is the male and one of the females caught on the same night:

The two others were hiding somewhere that I couldn't access as easily.

I believe the two most-recently caught females may be gravid, so I could have some more broods on my hands before long.

And just for fun, here's a map (looking east) of where these specimens came from:

Successful U. mordax Hunt

(Pardon the photo quality in advance -- we were using my friend's point-and-shoot, which as I'm sure you know, wouldn't work too well in the dark.)

After one pathetic attempt (one female) and one completely fruitless attempt, I went back to Botkin Road with a friend of mine in the hopes of finding some U. mordax. It seems we did it right this time -- the right spot at night (as opposed to the wrong spot at night, or the right spot in the day).

The first spot we found anything at was on an exposed hill that would have been in the sun a few hours earlier. We found one female and one male underneath some pieces of plywood laying on the dirt.

BL pic of one of them:
The male:
They were found on the portion of the hill below the road -- looking above the road didn't turn anything up. We went up the road about another 1/4 mile to another exposed area. The soil on the hills here is really REALLY loose, and so we found nothing checking the second hill, either. We were about to give up when we blacklit under a rock that was laying on some more stable soil on the hill.

Two second instars! They were found within six inches of each other. I would have loved to get a pic of the both of them, but one ran away before we could get the camera. Here's a couple shots of the other one:

We let those two go. The guy I was with thought he heard something, so we did a sweep of the hill with our lights before heading back to his truck. I swept my blacklight across the hill and something green caught my eye. It was another female about ten feet from me! We scrambled up the hill and easily scooped her into the cup that we photographed the little one in and decided to call it a night.

A few pics from when we got back . . .

Tyler's first handling experience:

The male / female from underneath the plywood:
The second female:

Uroctonus mordax to 2I

I've been checking on my Uroctonus mordax brood almost daily the past week, but I'd only been checking by holding a flashlight to the side of the container and looking underneath mom's hide from the edge of the tank. Each time I saw white, assumed nobody had molted, and put the light away until next time.

When I looked tonight, I thought I saw more definition to the scorplings than usual, so I risked removing the hide for some photography. And what do you know? They've begun molting to second instar!
Compared to my photo from last week, you can see that there's less "pudge," and they were also eager to scurry from mom's back at my disturbing them. In the next photo, you can see one of the molts on mom's carapace.


Either this species remains white at 2I, or I caught them recently enough that no one has had a chance to darken.

I'm thinking of removing mom from this container when the young scatter and trying a "juvenile community," to see if it's like emperor scorpions (juveniles do fine together) or bark scorpions (juveniles happily snack on each other). As these are forest scorpions, I'm hoping for the former, but I have heard of cannibalism in this species when different sizes were kept together.

Update from 7/26: More have molted and began to darken up.

Uroctonus mordax Brood

While checking on and feeding my invertebrates today, I discovered I was correct when I thought my largest female Uroctonus mordax was gravid.

I counted at least 16 scorplings, with more possibly buried underneath. For those of you who aren't aware this species is native to the Pacific Northwest. This particular specimen was collected around 14 miles west of Corvallis, Oregon, in the Coast Range.

Here's a modified version of the above photo to better show the babies:

My First "Wild-Caught"

I went camping last weekend with a few friends with the intention of FINALLY capturing some Uroctonus mordax -- the small species of forest scorpion native to Oregon and Washington (and yes, California too).

Success! I found two blacklighting on Saturday, thanks to some teamwork with my fiancee.

The next morning I went back for some rock-flipping and found a third that managed to get away. (Photo credit goes to my fiancee.)

For more pics and the whole story please see my post on ScorpionForum.