Are these all really dubia?

Y

yasha2802

First Instar
Some of my dubia molted in to adults and some of them are making me question if there all really dubia.

#1 seems to have a mask on the back of its head

#2 and 4 have a few dos but mostly black

#3 is all black

#5 has a large light brown spot

#6 looks more like a lvory and again has more of a design on it.

also #7-10 are in fact adult females right?

dubia2.jpg

 
Yes, those are all dubias, it's a pretty variable colored species, and a couple lighter color morphs have even been isolated. :) And no, 7-10 are all nymphs still, probably subadults guessing by the enlarged thoracic pads. 

 
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Thank you guys. I I know with some they all look very alike so with such a difference I just wanted to make sure. I'm guessing that is because there more a feeder species then a pet so they don't breed only a specific pattern?

It looks like I have 20 males and no females yet. I was thinking that was a nymph look but my bf fond something online saying different and I didn't want to believe I still have no females with so many male. I fond a nice picture of a female now.

Is it normal to get so many males with no females? I started with 60 large nymphs have 20 male, 0 female.

 
yasha2802 said:
Thank you guys. I I know with some they all look very alike so with such a difference I just wanted to make sure. I'm guessing that is because there more a feeder species then a pet so they don't breed only a specific pattern?

It looks like I have 20 males and no females yet. I was thinking that was a nymph look but my bf fond something online saying different and I didn't want to believe I still have no females with so many male. I fond a nice picture of a female now.

Is it normal to get so many males with no females? I started with 60 large nymphs have 20 male, 0 female.
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I would assume that wild dubias show the same amount of variation that captives do. With some insect species, every individual looks the same. With others, minor pattern/color variation is a common sight. And then there is the infamous Harmonia axyridis. :D

In many insects, the males reach adulthood faster than the females. This seems to be because they are smaller and thus grow faster. It is possible that:

1. Your female nymphs have not reached adulthood yet

2. You have adult females, but you don't know how to tell adult females from nymphs

Don't worry too much, I'm sure that your dubia sex ratios are not skewed at all. :)  

 
So I was doing a little more reading on sexing them and came across some posts talking about sexing nymphs by the last segment of there body like Hisserdude showed in this post.

I looked through my set and seems if its true that you can sex dubia like this to I only got 2-3 females in the set :/

Guess if that's the case the person I got them from tried only giving me males. I wouldn't be to surprised if they did. This set (large nymphs) was just not the greatest experience. My 1st set (from a different person) was great ordered 250(tiny nymphs) got over 300 and only 1 died. This set it seemed like 1 or 2 were dying off every day for the 1st week, still have a few dying off here or there but die off did slow down.

 
yasha2802 said:
Guess if that's the case the person I got them from tried only giving me males. I wouldn't be to surprised if they did. This set (large nymphs) was just not the greatest experience. My 1st set (from a different person) was great ordered 250(tiny nymphs) got over 300 and only 1 died. This set it seemed like 1 or 2 were dying off every day for the 1st week, still have a few dying off here or there but die off did slow down.
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The technique you mentioned holds true for non-cryptocercid roaches, and dubia isn't a cryptocercid.

Some roachkeepers are known to feed off their excess males, and I wouldn't be surprised if one of these decided to just sell them off as feeders instead.

 
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