Tuesday 16 June 2015

Goliathus orientalis preissi broken pupal cell and artificial puaption chamber

Just before constructing a pupal cell, a goliath beetle larva enters "the wondering phase". During this time the larva comes to the top of substrate "wondering" around, and trying to escape its current container. Such larva needs to be placed into a new box containing the mixture of peat and sand, where the larva will later construct its pupal cell. Sometime ago, I placed one of my golaithus orientalis larvae into such box and forgot to label it. Then later when I thought that the box had no larvae inside I decided to use it for another wandering larva goliath beetle larvae. The result was not very nice, as the first larvae finished its cell already and I accidentally broke it while preparing the substrate in the box for the larva N2.  The larva inside of the cell was still pretty active, and I was hoping that it will have some energy to repair the cell, although the damage was massive:(.  Normally such cell damage in large flower beetles such as Mecynorrhina results in larva leaving the cell and dying eventually, as it would not have enough to build a new pupal cell. I left the larvae in the broken cell as it is, and luckily one month later I discovered that it did not leave the cell. I transferred the larvae into the artificial pupal cell made from floral foam and about 2 days ago I discovered that it turned into a gorgeous female pupa! Please see the photos below.





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