All About Arthropods

My name is Joshua Campos and, for as long as I can remember, I have been interested in "bugs." This fascination was not always the strongest, but never disappeared. Then 2014 happened. I was 11 and had recently been accepted to a hybrid school. Since I only had to physically attend once a week, there was finally time to not just skim the surface of my passions, but dive in head first. After a bit of research, I acquired my first official pet arthropods - two female Phyllocrania paradoxa (Ghost Mantis) nymphs!

I continued to keep mantises and mantises alone, eventually compiling about half a dozen species. However, all was not well. Mismolts, bacterial/fungal infections, etc. began to unleash a seemingly unshakeable plague on my little zoo. With the battle clearly lost, I decided to step away from Mantodea and see if the grass was greener elsewhere.

In 2015, I plunged into the unchartered territory of roaches with a male Gromphadorhina oblongonota (Wide-Horn Hisser) nymph. He would live for nearly the next 3 years, but never truly pass. His legacy lives on in every new arthropod that I work with because, if it wasn't for his stability as a pet, who knows just how much longer I would have persisted.

Somewhere along the way, I created a blog to broadcast my experiences keeping and breeding the wee beasties. Posts were only shared with my relatively small community of fellow arthropod enthusiasts at first. Then I had an epiphany. As a lifelong fan of all things buggy, the misinformed hate the general public holds for these tiny beings has always been utterly deafening. What if I extended my reach beyond the confined borders of the arthropod cyberworld and tried changing peoples' minds? There sprouted the real manifestation of "Bring on the Bugs."

Today, I have the tremendous joy of keeping, breeding, observing, documenting, and spreading appreciation for the most scorned, yet most astounding animals on earth! 🦋🐞🦂🐜🐝🦗🕷️