Separating Colonies By Sex?

[saderbelle]

Hi! I'm currently doing a project for school, which is solely based around working with individuals from G. portentosa colonies. I have honestly become incredibly attached to some of them and am hoping to keep some for myself at the end of the experiment. I have three separate 'colonies'; one contains 3 adults and multiple nymphs ~ 3 months, another contains 22 adults and multiple nymphs > 1 month, and the last one contains 27 adults with multiple nymphs > 1 month. I would ideally like to keep about 6 - 10 of them, and I'm hoping that I will be able to donate the rest of them to a local insectarium.

I don't want to keep the adults for breeding, I just like them and want to have them as a pet. I have had a lot of trouble dealing with the nymphs, and I'm not allowed to keep nymphs in my house after a breakout happened over my winter break lol. I'm sure that all of the females I'm looking at keeping are currently pregnant, and I've read online that they have the potential to asexually reproduce. I know that I will probably have to remove nymphs a few times if I keep them, but I would rather do that just a few times a year than doing it multiple times every 2 months. 

The best idea I have for curbing them breeding is to keep them in separate terrariums based on sex. Keep all the males in one, and all females in the other. The main thing I'm worried about is the social aspect. I know that they're semi - social and do much better in colonies, but do the colonies require both sexes? I haven't really seen anything online about separating sexes, and I'm worried about how it could affect them. Does anyone know if they would be okay to keep them separated like that? All three of the colonies I have currently have at least one of each sex, although the ratios are very off. The smallest colony has 2 males and 1 female, the largest colony has 4 females and 23 males, and the other colony has 2 males and 20 females. The two bigger colonies have slight but noticeable differences in social patterns, which I've chalked mostly up to them being mostly composed of different sexes. They came from different breeders that most certainly kept them in different conditions, which could also have contributed to this. 

Does anybody have any information about this or an input on what I should do? Or if it would be a safer bet to just keep them all together? If keeping them all together makes them happier, than I will (begrudgingly) accept the inconvenience of dealing with the nymphs. Their contentedness and happiness easily means more to me than my dislike of nymphs. If anyone has more questions or wants more info, I'm more than happy to answer

[Hisserdude]

They're perfectly fine with being split by sex, and males will actually be less aggressive towards each other without females to fight over. As long as they have other members of their species, they're fine, regardless of the sex.

15 hours ago, saderbelle said:

I've read online that they have the potential to asexually reproduce.

Also, asexual reproduction has never to my knowledge been recorded in hissers. The females can however retain sperm for very long times, in fact one mating might be all their need to produce broods for the remainder of their lives, which may be where that rumor of parthenogenesis comes from.