Recent content by pannaking22

I have a variety of fruit fly vials from Carolina Biological Company that I'm looking to sell (needed them for a class). Includes several different mutations, along with the wild types. You can use them for your own genetics experiments or just as feeders. Great for mantid nymphs, true spiders...

One project at a time now since I'm currently working on a manual of grasshoppers of Illinois and guide to common ticks of Kenya  ;)  Fortunately there's already a cerambycid guide for Illinois, but for buprestids I've just been using the Buprestids of Eastern North America. Not a perfect...

I catch them mostly for a pinned collection, but it's also to help figure out what species we have in Illinois. I've helped out the Hanks' lab at UIUC a few times by collecting cerambycids and bringing them in for research purposes. No one has looked at the buprestids of Illinois, so it's...

Well, they gotta start somewhere, right? ;)

I'd try a cup of damp sand/coco fiber mix. Works for a lot of Orthoptera and since this is a pseudo-desert species it should hopefully work for them too. 

I use a beat sheet quite a bit to catch cerambycids and buprestids. It's fun to see what else may drop down though!  Your beetle is Labidomera clivicollis, the swamp milkweed beetle. The other little red guy is a species of true bug nymph, perhaps Oncopeltus fasciatus. 

Oh man, great species to have in the hobby! I'll have to get a few of those at some point when they get breeding well and become more available.

Won a contest Leanna put on and got a few mantids for just shipping. Was originally supposed to be orchids, but there were some ooth/L1 issues she was very open about and we settled on a few C. nebulosa instead. Communication was top notch with updates every couple days on molting and weather...

Roman isn't a part of this forum, but I just wanted to warn people that may come across him on other forums or on Facebook. He sells roaches for the most part and I know some of you use roaches to feed your mantids. This is a review I just posted on Roach Forum. Please keep in mind though, I'm...

Update?

Awesome! We'll discuss a bit and put up a WTB ad! Not sure what our budget will be like, but we should also have some things for trade if nothing else (mainly roaches, but I may have some beetles and spiders or scorpions I can part with).

Very cool! :) Yet another mantis to keep in mind. I'll talk with the other outreach coordinator here and hopefully we'll be able to put a list of mantids together we want to get

Thanks for the replies! We've used ghosts, giant Asian, Chinese, and Carolina mantids for outreach in the past and they have always been popular. I forgot to mention, the species we had last year were: P. wahlbergii D. desiccata D. lobata I'll have to start looking these up. I recognize a...

Does anyone have any recommendations for mantids that are easy to keep and would be good for outreach events? My university has its annual Insect Fear Film Festival in February and I want to start looking into good mantids to get before it gets cold. I don't mind rearing to adulthood, so I would...

Definitely Latrodectus, but most likely a subadult female L. mactans if you found it in Alabama. You can find L. variolus down there, but they're pretty rare. Juvenile L. mactans can have a variety of patterns and colors on their dorsal side. I promise you it isn't L. katipo and it isn't a...