wizentrop

44 minutes ago, Allpet Roaches said:

It will be difficult to come up with something neater than white Panchlora, not that you can't do it.

That's the fun part, nature is full of surprises!

26 minutes ago, Allpet Roaches said:

That is a very handsome looking species but I have Lucihormetica males with horns that are as large.

My bad, I'll try come up with something better next time

@CodeWilster I will post more photos soon. I just wanted to start this thread and show you guys the males.

@Hisserdude I just checked Morgan Hebard's original description of H. apolinari from 1919, there is no explanation given for the species name (and that is a bit unusual)

@Redmont hahaha
I feel that it would benefit from mentioning the male's horns, after all this is what the genus Hormetica is named after.
 

No "-less" in common names!!! It makes no sense.

@Redmont Nah, why take all the fun to myself. The good people here will come up with a good common name. As long as it is not "Glowspot-less Roach" I will be fine with it.

New species in the hobby, new genus to be more exact!
They are similar to the mega glowspots in size and care, but their appearance and behavior is a bit different. They also seem to grow much faster.

I have to agree with @Hisserdude here. High prices often reflect rarity, difficulties in establishing a captive colony, or an initial personal investment in obtaining the species.
But hey, if you don't like it you can always book a trip to South America and look for the same species yourself!

These will be on sale. I almost never do trades, and only for very unusual or uncommon species.
Better start getting a colony of those Corydidarum magnifica going...
 

@Redmont I will be offering some nymphs for sale very soon.

Another point of view on a male:

EDIT, Nov 2019: In light of new information, this species is NOT Hormetica apolinari, but Hormetica strumosa.

A little less-showy than their relatives, Lucihormetica, these are a new addition to the hobby. What they lack in glowspots they make up for in size, robustness, the presence of prominent horns in males, and behavior. They are also quite prolific. Hands down one of the most rewarding species to keep.

The topic is about beetles, and it is a very important discussion. Most cultured beetles species do not require flight display as a prerequisite for mating (there are insects out there that have a courtship flight display, butterflies are a good example, but also flies, dragonflies, and even some beetles like fireflies). More specifically, Cetoniinae are excellent fliers, but they will do just fine even in a closed space. And they breed willingly. However, if your intention is to build an educational display to showcase the beetles' flight abilities (an idea I played with a lot), then yes you would definitely need a small netted room for them to perform their maneuvers. Butterfly farms, by the way, do not avoid the problem of adults beating themselves up against the mesh walls. I take it you haven't been to a lot of butterfly houses then. There is always a subset of adults (those that are not busy courting/mating/feeding) that fly to the corners of the netted cage and exhaust themselves by trying to get out, sometimes to death. It is a calculated risk for the butterfly farm, and they produce so many adults that no one pays attention to a few beaten ones. 

By the way, many roaches are flighty in the wild, not just Megaloblatta. You might be surprised to hear, but male Polyphaga aegyptiaca for example are frequent fliers in their natural habitat, entering homes and surprising people while taking a shower.

@Hisserdude @WarrenB I do ship internationally. By the way, I think BugNation is dead now - it's gone.

@dactylus @Andee you can shorten the waiting time and get a group of these now, just sayin' 

34 minutes ago, Tleilaxu said:

In my opinion what you describe yourself as looks more like a taxidermist/taxonomist to me... Kill animals for scientific purposes.

Yeah well, I am an entomologist with taxonomy on my interests so that is pretty accurate.

That is not what being a collector means. If I stumble upon something interesting it is always research first, and then if there are extras due to breeding they can go to academic institutions or into the hobby if anyone is interested.
I see the term "collector" more as someone who collects everything, like stamp-collecting. That is not what I do (unless I am hired by a natural history museum to survey an area, in which case everything collected is killed and preserved for the museum). Most of the time I am VERY selective.

I am actually not a collector.. but I do like to look into and describe new species that I find during work

Well, this is why you need to experiment. PB does work for some species, might not work for others. Or maybe in the Middle East they have a more salty tooth.

@Tleilaxu be careful, PB will also attract other things (ants, rodents). Not sure how effective it will be for roaches if placed out in the open.

I would not expect to see the blue roach anytime soon in the hobby. Finding these obscure species takes time.

@Hisserdude pretty much covered some of the main methods for collection.

I hate to disappoint here, but even though in recent years I became interested in cockroaches diversity, I never go on trips expecting to collect them. In other words, I do not set traps specifically for them. The idea is more to look at the big picture and examine the entire arthropod diversity in a certain location. Yeah, I do see some interesting roaches while doing so, some of them come to light trap (not only males, @Hisserdude) others hidden under bark/stones, and some just roaming about on the vegetation. Unless you are looking for a certain species only, there is no reason to limit the search to one type of habitat.

But let's go back to the topic of bait traps. I'll tell you a nice story about a friend of mine from university. He needed to collect some blattids for a behavioral research project, so he built a trap from a plastic bottle by inverting the top part inwards. He used biscuits with some peanut butter as bait (PB is known to be very attractive for roaches) and waited. He waited 3 nights and nothing happened. No one came. Then he realized a key component was missing from his trap. A roach. He looked hard and managed to collect a single cockroach, then he put it inside the trap. The following morning the trap was swarming with cockroaches. The aggregation pheromone did its job here. The roaches sensed the presence of a conspecific + food, and responded by flooding the trap with members.

A lot of people have been asking me about the species of Panchlora in culture, and why I price the white roaches differently than the others. More specifically, people wanted to know about their size difference. I took a photo to show you the sizes of Panchlora "white" and P. "speckled", compared to P. nivea. Please note that my P. nivea come from a wild population, so they might not be P. nivea at all, but their size is identical to P. nivea that is in culture.
These are all unmated females. P. "speckled" is slightly bigger than P. nivea, and Panchlora "white" is even bigger.
You can also see the color difference between the species, but I'll note that the light conditions for photographing them were not ideal. Panchlora are known to be very reflective. Besides the body color, you can also see differences in the color of their antennae.

I have to say that figuring out the females' color is a little tricky with this species. The left female in Hisserdude's last photo represents the color faithfully. However, there is a bit of an optical illusion here because of the light in the photo, and the female looks too pale. To see what I mean, tilt your head to the right (like you would do when reading the title of book sitting on your shelf). The female will look slightly more metallic green. That's the right color.

Hisserdude, your females should have given birth by now.

By the way, I do not keep this species with any other arthropods, but I do have predatory mites in their enclosure (they come and go). That being said, they should be perfectly fine with springtails/isopods.