Allpet Roaches

I still remember my first hissers in 1980. They had such a special smell and feel of uniqueness that is entirely lost on me now.

Might be old age, but too much heat and dryness can kill them too. If you're not trying to breed them there is no need for extra heat or basking.

Got it. Any other suggestions?

I don't know how I missed this post. So sorry, the main thing is getting the moisture right, not too dry or too wet. The cage decorations don't matter much.

Do you have a picture of your expansus? They look different from different areas and just two localities are in the main hobby.

I think Porcellio expansus is bigger than both if you're looking at overall size but many Ligia are bigger than the very biggest Porcello.

I've seen a lot of neat patterns but I don't ever remember different sized wings. The patterns are easy to breed for.

Finally arrived, some of it's silly like a little white box of water and a package of sticks.

Welcome! There are tons of great invertebrates in Texas.

If it is outside here body for more than the half hour it takes to form and retract the ootheca is dead. If it happens again and doesn't fall off you can cut off what's sticking out. Gently trying to remove could damage her.

Have you figured it out? Usually they only get stuck if it is too dry or they're old and sickly.

Did you ever get them again? Any chance the losses had to do with seasonal temperatures affecting the indoor temps or humidity?

There have been at least five different "princisia" stocks brought in that are far more different looking from each other in morphology and coloration than oblongonota and portentosa. Nobody has documented the geographic populations so saying disjunct doesn't mean anything. We simply assume they come from different valleys or mountains because they are different from each other and wild populations are known to vary from one area to the other in Madagascar. If a taxonomist creates a new genus based on an unstable character (say the hisser notch or the height of a human) and the species is not identifiable from it, nobody can use the description to identify a specimen.

The original description in French relies mostly on the genus description. Admittedly I haven't read it in decades but if the genus is bad the species description was worse. It is sort of like Eudicella with all the crazy species and subspecies that probably aren't anything more than geographic varieties.

Mine are a molt or two away. From your newest pics they seem more pure than the common stock but the colors and pronotums are off a little from the "big" I once had. Admittedly I didn't think to take pictures of various specimens back then. I don't think the tiger hissers are really from an invalid species within an invalid genus. Throwing out male genitalia as an identifier allowed taxonomists to create a mess that may never be cleaned up but it does make one species with some variability seem much more interesting to the casual researcher.