Centruroides at Second Instar

Right on schedule! A week after birth, the latest brood is molting to second instar. A better picture as first instars:


And a picture my fiancee took last night, the majority having molted:


(The scaled-down version doesn't do it justice, click here for the full version.) The one on the "shoulder" of the female's left pedipalp was trying to wriggle free of the last of its exuvium. I think the "humpbacked" one towards the upper-left of the pile is also in the process of molting.

I have another male hopefully arriving today, and a potential exchange lined up -- the new male for another gravid female.

Male Emperor Matures

Last night I scanned over a few tanks with my blacklight and discovered a disheveled pile of exoskeleton in my subadult emperor tank. I momentarily thought that one of my males had been cannibalized, but my fiancee thought it looked more like a molt (she was right).

I'd noticed a few weeks ago that one of them was getting incredibly fat and heading for a molt. It seems as though I was right! Unfortunately, he's too far back in the burrow to get a good look at, and the tankmates trampled the exuvium to the point that it's not worth displaying.

The female I recently acquired (see two posts down) seems to be doing better with her grain mites. Most wild-caught emperors seem to give birth in the spring, so if she hasn't had a brood by then, I'll try putting a male in with her. (Hopefully the other two will mature by then to improve the odds.)

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.

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.

More molts

Checked on the Hottentotta today. The pudgy one molted, and the slender one died. No great surprise there.

I just hope that among the survivors I have at least one male / female pair that survives to adulthood. If I succeed and breed a second generation, I'm DEFINITELY setting up a hotbox for the young.

I checked on my limited tarantula collection -- one of my OBTs and my Avicularia versicolor both molted.

Long-awaited molts

Doing the rounds today I discovered that three of my five Hottentotta judaicus have FINALLY molted to third instar.

I got eight 2I that were born sometime in May of 2008; by July, three had died. None seemed to be putting on much weight and all were extremely skittish when disturbed, so I wasn't sure if they were even aware of prey when I introduced it. I didn't really know what was going on -- the person who sent them to me said they were hearty eaters.

I did know that I was probably keeping them too far on the cool side (they hail from Jordan, and my apartment doesn't get quite that warm) but other sources suggested they don't need to be kept under very hot conditions to do well.

Either way, when we moved the bugs into the bedroom for the winter I put all of them right next to the heater, where it's usually at least 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Now three have molted, one's fat and looking ready to molt, and one's still on the slender side.

I'd post pics, but the SLR is currently out of commission.

Hadogenes paucidens molts to 3rd instar

A while back I received 11 second-instar Hadogenes paucidens. Unfortunately, the majority died (I've heard that this species is difficult to rear from early instars), and I was left with only two. I checked on them today and discovered that one had finally molted to third instar!

This species is very slow-growing, so I'd been waiting quite a while on it.

Here's the pudgy sibling that I'm still waiting on:

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.

Miscellaneous Updates

I figure it's about time for a few random updates since I haven't posted in nearly a month, so here they are.

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I've been trying to downsize my collection a bit, mainly so I could focus on keeping communal species -- I'd rather have a large pile of deli cups if I know that the inhabitants can eventually be housed together. My current collection (scorpions only) has been reduced to:

0.1.0 Centruroides hentzi
0.0.1 Centruroides margaritatus
0.1.0 Centruroides vittatus
0.0.2 Hadogenes paucidens
0.1.0 Hadrurus arizonensis
0.1.8 Heterometrus longimanus
0.0.5 Hottentotta judaicus
0.0.4 Pandinus imperator
0.5.0 Tityus stigmurus
1.4.12 Uroctonus mordax
0.0.1 Vaejovis spinigerus

The only species on that list that aren't communal are the H. paucidens, V. spinigerus, and H. arizonensis. I plan on passing those onto other hobbyists soon. The C. hentzi is an adult female that I've had for over a year so I'm not thinking of breeding her again -- I may just keep her til she expires rather than giving her to someone without knowing her age. The C. margaritatus I've decided to keep until adulthood in the hopes of finding a mate (this is the bicolor morph which is very pretty, and I would love to have a community of them).

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Last week I was stopping by the lab I used to work in, and as luck would have it, the woman who spotted the U. mordax that birthed this summer found another one! On the floor of a classroom she was in, no less.

I have no idea how, but a third-instar U. mordax somehow made its way into one of the buildings at OSU. The habitat for this species has to be at least ten miles away. I asked an entomologist in the building if he knew anything about it, and the closest answer he could think of was an escapee from a soil litter sample somewhere in the building.

It sure worked out well for me, though!

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The same day as the arrival of the renegade U. mordax, I got a package from a friend of mine in Texas -- five third-instar Tityus stigmurus. This is a beautiful orange and black species native to Brazil that happens to be parthenogenic (for those of you who don't know, that means it's capable of reproducing asexually; a mature female will simply give birth to little clones of herself). Hopefully this will be the easiest community I've ever attempted.

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Last night I was checking on my second instar U. mordax and noticed one in kind of a funny pose. My thought, since it wasn't moving but clearly wasn't in the "dead" pose, was that it was preparing to molt. Later that night a friend of mine to whom I gave one of the other 2I said hers was molting -- after double-checking on mine, I saw the same thing!

None of my other nine from this brood have molted yet, so hopefully they will soon. Some look like they're still to skinny (I hope they begin to feed more). Oh, and I found out another one of the five that I gave away died.

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A couple weekends ago I was checking on my U. mordax community and lifted a rock where there had previously been one adult and one subadult female -- now, there was one adult female and half of one subadult female.

I took the larger female out in case she may have been gravid (gravid females are known to be less communal across a lot of species). It was dissapointing to see my collection shrink, but as the saying goes, "all scorpions are communal until they aren't."

I thought it may have been due to the size discrepancy, but within a few days my male and the other subadult female had occupied the same hide under the rock. Also, I saw one in the corner when I went to mist, and discovered it was sitting on top of a tankmate. Perhaps I just had a grouchy female.

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The same female mentioned in the above minipost was taken on a community outreach and gave me my first sting experience with this species. I was a little disappointed at how weak it was -- it barely went beyond "dry sting" status, and that's only because I felt a little tingling after the fact.

If you're wondering, I was attempting to scootch the female off of my hand and onto a student's at the outreach, and she flicked her tail back at me. I felt her stinger connect (like brushing your finger against a pin) but felt no pain -- just a slight tingling a minute later. I figure it was somethign akin to a scorpion "warning shot." I used it as a chance to explain to the students how harmless this species was even if it does decide to sting.

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And finally, a non-scorpion post.

A friend of mine from Georgia was able to pick up a few brown widows the last time she visited home and told me she had a male if I was interested. I initially had two males; one got eaten by a female and one was more or less a runt that just died.

I picked up a male and female from my friend (they were cohabiting, so I figured that was a good sign) on Thursday night last week (I write this on Tuesday morning). Friday night I introduced him to my only female. There was much web-dancing and moving about the tank, as well as some movement by the female, but I eventually grew bored and left them alone. I returned later and saw the male in position, and could clearly see the reproductive structure unwound from his pedipalp and in the female's ventral opening (forgive my lack of knowledge with spider anatomy).

Shortly after I arrived they separated and the male backed off from the female -- I assumed I disturbed them and he would now be eaten. However, when I checked back in 12 hours, they were mating again! As of last night they were still successfully cohabiting.

I figure I can leave the male in there, as he's been with all the females in my posession and has no further use for me. If he gets eaten, that's too bad; if he stays alive, that's an good example countering the "widow" status of his partner (though she did eat the first male I offered her).

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Hopefully soon I'll be able to post pictures of the new T. stigmurus as well as the freshly-molted U. mordax.

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.

Heterometrus longimanus molting

I was doing the rounds yesterday and when I went to check on my juvenile Heterometrus longimanus community, I managed to catch one little guy in the act of molting (something I've only witnessed once before in a much smaller scorpion).

When I found him at 8:20 PM:

One of his tankmates came out to check on him and see what I was up to (note the threat posture):

A blacklight pic for fun -- he decided to molt right beside another exuvium:

A weird shot of what the pedipalps look like during all this (8:42 PM):10:48 PM and the pedipalps are free:

Finished up just after midnight:

That's his exuvium on the left, along with the one he molted next to:
For another 7 pictures of the sequence, please go here.

Centruroides margaritatus molted to 3I

I came home today to find one of my Centruroides margaritatus had molted to 3rd instar (I know it happened today because I checked on them this morning). Two out of three of my C. margaritatus have now molted since acquiring them -- I think the third one was already 3I.