Hymenopus coronatus

[Ranitomeya]

I hadn't really thought about the calendar--maybe next year. These were all taken with my iPhone 4S and I've found that it's possible to take pretty nice photos with the right lighting.

Female about 20 hours after it successfully escaped its old exoskeleton.


One of my three impatient males immediately pounced and got into position on the fresh female. I had to carefully remove him afterwards to avoid her eating him and him scratching and puncturing her still-soft wings.

 

[Ranitomeya]

Connection 83 days after receiving them as L2 nymphs. That's 11 days after she molted into an adult.

Here's to hoping for a new generation.

 

[dmina]

Great Job! Congrats

 

[Ranitomeya]

One of the two remaining females finally laid an ootheca. I've witnessed both connecting with three different males at least half a dozen times, ending with cohabiting with a male for a month until they both ate their males and the remaining male died of old age. One female fell during her molt to adulthood, another molted everything but the tip of one raptorial claw and the tarsus and hardened her exoskeleton in a heap of tangled and bent legs against the container, and another died for unknown reasons after two months of refusing to eat anything but sugar water after a successful adult molt.

Here's the female with her ootheca laid on the leaf of a Bifrenaria harrisonae. This orchid seems to tolerate conditions quite outside its normal range--it should experience warm and wet summers with cool and dry winters, but I grow it outside where it experiences cool and wet winters and warm and dry summers if I forget to water it. Now it has to deal with me giving it a warm and wet winter.

 

[MantisGalore]

Gorgeous

 

[Ranitomeya]

The first nymph hatched yesterday, and a second hatched today. Despite containing well over a hundred eggs and having seen the female mate several times with multiple males, only about a dozen looked developed when the ootheca was held against a strong light.

 

[spider_creations]

You should do a post on how to take the banna and get it to grow leaves like in one of you pictures I am interested on how you did that could you tell me?

 

[Ranitomeya]

Those are not bananas, but I do see the resemblance. Those are Bifrenaria harrisoniae, a type of orchid. They produce thick storage bulbs.

 

[spider_creations]

Oh wow funny how much they look like bannas