fabarmadillo Posted January 10, 2017 Share Posted January 10, 2017 I've had a small colony of Madagascar hissers for four years. There isn't much genetic diversity but otherwise they seem very healthy. A few months ago, all but one of the males suddenly died within a day. Their eyes turned white, and several also had white growths on their legs. The growths were all the size of a grain of rice and looked like worms, except that they were hard and weren't moving. The dead roaches fell apart at the joints or completely crumbled when I tried to pick them up. About a year before that, another male had looked the same when it died. But that time, the infection didn't spread around the colony. I think there were one or two females that died too. Otherwise, the females and the one male weren't affected at all. Any ideas what caused this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hisserdude Posted January 10, 2017 Share Posted January 10, 2017 Sounds like an entomophagus fungus of some sort to me, which is very bad, since those can spread around your entire colony and kill everything inside. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fabarmadillo Posted January 13, 2017 Author Share Posted January 13, 2017 On 1/10/2017 at 1:40 PM, Hisserdude said: Sounds like an entomophagus fungus of some sort to me, which is very bad, since those can spread around your entire colony and kill everything inside. That makes sense. What's curious to me is, why were most of the females not affected? Can there be a sex-linked immunity to the fungus? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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