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Agreed. I have had some Zophobas adults slow down and mysteriously die after molting, though, so I was speaking from experience. The plumpness is a good sign, if the roach refuses food for a few days it may still have energy to recover.

I'm in CA, so...

It seems that wrinkly wings should have no statistically significant bad effects on roaches. Tenebrionid beetles with really messed-up wings can live normal lives easily, so When insects become lethargic and slow-moving, often they are near death. If they eat, they often recover from their weakness. If they refuse food, they are usually doomed to roach heaven, no matter how hard the keeper tries to save their lives. If I were you, I would isolate that female in a comfortable small box, try stimulating the palps with fruit/water (more digestible than normal roachfood?), and hope for the best. There might be a small chance your peppered roach makes it, so good luck!

I've searched here and beetleforum extensively, and I have not found any guides to making rotted leaves (though wood fermentation instructions are rather common). Here is my attempt, which some of you roachkeepers may find useful. Currently they have been freshly put into containers, so I will update as time progresses. https://sp-uns.blogspot.com/2018/02/i-attempt-to-synthesize-rotted-leaves.html

I particularly like this specific image. The contrast between the enormous adult, new young, and springtails makes it such a balanced and elegant photograph.

Many arthropods are known to produce powdery coats, including the isopod Porcellionides pruinosus. Thus, its occurrence on hissers isn't too surprising.

The technique you mentioned holds true for non-cryptocercid roaches, and dubia isn't a cryptocercid. Some roachkeepers are known to feed off their excess males, and I wouldn't be surprised if one of these decided to just sell them off as feeders instead.

I would assume that wild dubias show the same amount of variation that captives do. With some insect species, every individual looks the same. With others, minor pattern/color variation is a common sight. And then there is the infamous Harmonia axyridis. In many insects, the males reach adulthood faster than the females. This seems to be because they are smaller and thus grow faster. It is possible that: 1. Your female nymphs have not reached adulthood yet 2. You have adult females, but you don't know how to tell adult females from nymphs Don't worry too much, I'm sure that your dubia sex ratios are not skewed at all.

This would presumably only work if the area has a dry and a wet season. @Xenoblatta obviously has access to them in the wild, and I'm curious to know what specific conditions (temperature, humidity, seasonal changes, location, so on) oothecae and nymphs are normally found in, the more precise the better. Cockroaches: Ecology, Behavior, and Natural History (online for free) states that nymphs may ail/die in conditions adults seem fine in, for reasons I forgot. Trying to replicate the environmental conditions wild oothecae/nymphs are found in would prove useful for everyone if they were imported to the US in some distant future.

Outreach is good I have noticed that not all people will respond to the "harmless roach" tactic, though. Many will simply lose their abilty to think in straight lines as soon as the C-word is mentioned.

But putting "carabid" in "carabid ground beetles" can't hurt.

PPS: Don't worry, this is the correct section to post this.

Now, if a large zoo dares to call roaches "immortal" and "gross" when the insects involved are harmless hissers, I'd be a bit mad. Even the "pest" roach (no insect is truly a pest) Periplaneta americana is pretty pathetic at home invasion. I think this is also the case with all the other house-dwelling species that are not Blattella germanica. I believe @Tleilaxu has actually managed to find and rescue a dying P. australasiae that was starving and dehydrated in his house. Anyways... I checked the website carefully for any signs of anti-roach bias, and they didn't use any insulting words to describe their hissers; this is good. The one complaint I have is that they failed to say anything particularly positive about the roaches either, and seemed to passively allow whatever false beliefs the visitors hold about roaches to continue uncontradicted. PS: I would love a plush hisser, though I'm hoping it wasn't anthropomorphized.

I'm already aware of the vast quantity of, er, imaginative moth names. Now, I know Heart-and-dart does have two "hearts" and two "darts" on its wings, but seriously, those hearts are pretty lumpy. And whoever decided to make "Ground Beetle" a standardized common name has probably forgotten the tenebrionids. Ugh

Molting errors are not extremely rare, even in wild insects. I've seen coccinellids with small elytral dents, fungus beetles with crooked elytra/flight wings, a leafhopper with a molt so bad it couldn't fly (it looked healthy though), and so on. It doesn't seem to be too common though, I only see a deformed insect once in a long while, and if the deformation is minor the insect will probably experience a normal life even in the dangerous outdoors. This is because they are not exclusively caused by genetics. When a beetle, roach, or other insect molts to adulthood, it must inflate its soft wings and allow them to harden for a while. Now, during this vulnerable period even touching the wings can cause them to bend and change shape, and if such a thing happens they will harden in this shape. This is how small dents (for beetles) and lopsided wings are usually created, and for this reason they are common deformities. On the other hand, things like "waterballoon wings" and a complete failure to inflate wings at all seem to be problems with the molting process itself. I once produced a Zophobas morio adult which had one normal elytron and one that turned into a small fluid-bag. In my case, poor larval care was likely to blame. Thus, I agree with @Hisserdude's conclusion. Since you report that all dubias were cared for meticulously, I would blame it on inherently weak/unhealthy insects that have trouble with the delicate molting process, were so stressed in the past breeder's bin that they now eat wings under any conditions, and so on and so forth. Pictures of them are still appreciated, though.

Yep. I do find them useful as informal species-describers, though. For example, I could call Calathus ruficollis the "red-fronted carabid ground-beetle" to provide a quick and easy description of its appearance and taxonomic affinities, especially to those who are unfamiliar with the classification system. Notice that I said "carabid ground-beetle" instead of "ground-beetle", because many ground-dwelling coleopterans do not belong to the "Ground Beetle" family Carabidae. But let's not forget that Periplaneta americana originated in Africa

Blaptica dubia is apparently the only species in its genus kept in the hobby. This signifies that hybridization is very unlikely to occur. Have you looked at this? Notorious wing-eaters.

Yep, the first word in every species' name is a genus.

"Heart and dart" for a fat noctuid moth? Well, maybe those naturalists were getting too excited with their subjects, but nothing too serious. Green junebug for Cotinis? Well, a pretty bad one, considering that Cotinis isn't even in the junebeetle group Melolonthinae and doesn't behave like one either, but still understandable. But "Japanese beetle" for Popillia japonica (the fact remains that there are PLENTY OF COLEOPTERAN SPECIES IN JAPAN)? Um... I think that name speaks for itself.

I believe that Cockroaches: Ecology, Behavior, and Natural History confirms that Phoraspis and several other "colorful trenchcoat roaches" are lampyrid mimics or something.

https://entomologytoday.org/2018/02/02/insect-common-names-invented-artificial-intelligence/

Does anyone know of a simpler method to make (heavily-ventilated) mesh lids that doesn’t involve electric drills or buying stuff?

Ah, I forgot about Phoraspis and friends, the other “trenchcoat-wearing” roaches! Something about that pronotum shape did look a bit strange for Gyna.

I second this. If you browse through the photo gallery, you can find many members with natural-looking cages. Do make sure that whatever you put in your own tanks has no pesticides/pathogens/small hitchhikers, though.