The effects of overcrowding

[Zephyr]

About 3 months ago I started having adult die offs in my A. tesselata colony. I added more hiding places in the enclosures to compensate for the space that was slowly dwindling. Eventually I started finding dead nymphs and tons of them all crinkly and bumpy. I burned off about 3/5's of the colony and kept the hardiest ones that remained. For a molt or two after the culling the nymphs still looked crinkly. Now, about 1.5 months after it, I'm having nymphs molt out hypopigmented like these ones:

Perfectly healthy, but hypopigmented.

Here's a comparison between a recovered one and one that's been normal all along:

The coloration is very neat but not worth the trouble I had with phorid flies and die offs.

It's not dietary; I haven't made any radical changes in their food, and if I did, they'd all be displaying these traits, at least to some degree.

Very intriguing, isn't it?

 

[bartus]

About 3 months ago I started having adult die offs in my A. tesselata colony. I added more hiding places in the enclosures to compensate for the space that was slowly dwindling. Eventually I started finding dead nymphs and tons of them all crinkly and bumpy. I burned off about 3/5's of the colony and kept the hardiest ones that remained. For a molt or two after the culling the nymphs still looked crinkly. Now, about 1.5 months after it, I'm having nymphs molt out hypopigmented like these ones:

Perfectly healthy, but hyperpigmented.

Here's a comparison between a recovered one and one that's been normal all along:

The coloration is very neat but not worth the trouble I had with phorid flies and die offs.

It's not dietary; I haven't made any radical changes in their food, and if I did, they'd all be displaying these traits, at least to some degree.

Very intriguing, isn't it?

In my colony the tessalata's are not peppered after their last molt but more dark: thus also hyperpigmented!

Bart

Holland

 

[Ralph]

I've got a nymph like that who's subadult now and changed color gradually over the last few molts. Just throwin' in my experience.

 

[Zephyr]

I've got a nymph like that who's subadult now and changed color gradually over the last few molts. Just throwin' in my experience.

I'd assume that the younger they are when the bad molt/ conditions occur, the less it effects what they look like as an adult. I found one subadult male who molted into one of these orange-ish ones and he's probably about 2/3's the size of a "Normal" subadult male. I'm very interested in seeing what the adults from this recovering generation look like

 

[Keith]

I know this thread is old, but was wondering if you had any adults with the light coloring? I've only seen this with dubia and am in the processes of seeing if 2 hypopigmented adults breed if the light color will be passed on genetically.

If it doesn't, I am not sure if overcrowding, improper diet, or inbreeding is the cause but yes usually these light individuals are smaller in size.