followthebluebell:bogleech:bogleech:This seemed to amaze some people the most of the insect facts so
followthebluebell:bogleech:bogleech:This seemed to amaze some people the most of the insect facts so to further clarify:Ants and termites have some of the same social adaptations right down to the seasonal “mating flights” by a special, winged reproductive caste, yet ants and termites have no direct relation to one another at all.Ants evolved from wasps and can still be considered a type of wasp.Termites evolved from cockroaches, and were previously considered their own separate order, but it was eventually proven that they are still full blooded roaches just a few short years ago! You can see that evolution did a whole lot more to termites than it did to ants, though. An ant at least still looks almost exactly like a wasp.Smithsonian: “Termites are moving in with cockroaches, taxonomically” I take it as such a given, I forgot again that the ant wasp connection would really be new information to people and was just thinking the termite cockroach one was novel.Besides the same body shape, ants also have the same kind of stingers as other wasps and bees, and having a little venomous butt needle (a modification to egg laying equipment!) Is absolutely unique in all the world to this one insect group! People think of it as an almost “generic bug thing” and put it on fictional species never considering it was invented only by a wasp ancestor! (Bees are also wasp derived) oh oh the roach-termite connection is really cool, tho. It had some serious ramifications in the reptile-keeping hobby. in 2010, the American population of Acheta domesticus (the brown house cricket) suffered a HUGE crash. This little cricket was the backbone of pretty much the entire reptile industry; almost everyone fed their reptiles these little guys and it vanished almost entirely overnight. What happened was Acheta domesticus densovirus, a form of cricket paralysis virus, had reached American shores. The house cricket was especially vulnerable to this virus. It spread quickly and had an almost 100% fatality rate. It wasn’t even identified until like 2015 (and the fact that it’s a densovirus was ALSO super important because it meant almost no one was using the proper decon methods but that’s another post entirely). I can’t overstate how devastating this was for the bug industry. In addition to being fed to reptiles, crickets were also an essential scientific organism for tests and the only insect approved for human consumption. But this left reptile hobbyists with a big problem: we didn’t have anything else to feed our little buddies. Some reptiles can be SUPER picky when it comes to their food; if they aren’t introduced to a wide variety of insects at a young age, some will just flat-out not recognize other insects as food (eg, a leopard gecko fed only mealworms might not recognize crickets). Some pet stores started stocking the Jamaican field cricket, which was a HUGE mistake. These guys are super aggressive as far as bugs go. Enter the cockroach. Specifically, Blaptica dubia, the dubia cockroach. These guys had already been getting popular within the hobby. They’re a fairly slow growing cockroach that thrives in tropical conditions, so they’re a low escape risk in most of the US. They can’t climb slick plastic or glass, they can’t really fly, they don’t stink, they’re quiet, and super easy to raise. They were the ideal feeder insect. I’ve been keeping them for almost 10 years now. Honestly, I think they’re kinda cute. Their popularity exploded. In captivity, the average dubia roach has a lifespan of about 2-3 years. They begin breeding at around 6 months, each female producing around 20-30 babies per month. But I noticed that my colony wasn’t quite thriving. Sure, my females were breeding, but they were dropping dead at around a year and a half. I reached out to other hobbyists and they were having similar problems. We compared a lot of notes: we had the right temps, the right humidity, everything seemed just about perfect. A lot of people didn’t care TOO much. After all, their females were still keeping up with the demand. The only meal that really mattered was the final one, right? No one thought much about it seriously, honestly, until reptile hobbyists started noticing our reptiles getting kidney problems. Specifically, gout and uric acid build-up, primarily among reptiles being fed mostly dubia roaches. This was a HUGE deal in the hobby. Like Allen Repashy was in on this, since a lot of the dying roaches were being fed on his bug burger formula. The problem was, bug burger was designed to be a high protein diet. It was designed for crickets and no one really considered reformulating it for roaches. Why would they? Roaches eat anything, right? In crickets, a high protein diet is perfect. It’s what they thrive on. But roaches… they’re more like termites. I think it was in 2017 that someone finally started delving into how termites digest wood and realized that these guys EXCEL at extracting protein from all kinds of sources. What’s a low protein diet to anyone else is Just Right for them. And that’s when people started thinking about uric acid build-up in roaches again. We realized that it was the high protein diet that was seriously fucking up our bugs and, by extension, our reptiles. This roach-termite connection COMPLETELY changed the way we fed our roaches. It’s no longer recommended to feed them fish flakes or cat food. Repashy was one of the first people to redo a bug formula specifically for roaches and call attention to this issue. -- source link
#termites#roaches#crickets