12/15/2021: Abundant success with random Eleodes

While collecting in Arizona this fall I strived to collect fewer species of Eleodes, but greater numbers per species. This can be difficult because often you will find one or two species abundantly at any given site, then sparing numbers of others, and fall doesn’t seem to be the best season for their species diversity.

While several thousand feet up in the Chiricahua mountains around the ghost town of Paradise, I scaled the forested mountainside and collected Eleodes under dead pine bark. The species is of good size, but not large or bulky by any standards. I figured they would be a decent species for rearing all life stages communally, so put in the effort to collect a fair number. These efforts paid off as my suspicions were confirmed; upon checking the colony the other night I said to myself: “This seems like more than I put in here…” Even more fortunate, producing adults within this short timespan means there is no larval or pupal diapause requirement, which many larger Eleodes seem to have.

I took this same approach with Eleodes collected in Animas, New Mexico, and achieved similar results. It would seem many of these Eleodes are very easy to culture, and this opens many interesting doors. At this point the limiting factor to easy, dozen species breeding display tanks of darkling beetles is finding proper substrate material. I went out on a limb and mixed a touch of clay into the lower substrate layers, which gives it more clumping power than pure sand.

I have even gotten good results with Eleodes osculans, a species I struggled to get larvae from before. I did a bit of trickery with those, however; TJ Ombrelle stated females prefer to oviposit in pure sand, so I did the pupation mixture for most of the substrate but put an inch layer of pure sand above it. I haven’t seen any fresh adults yet, but I have seen some of the familiar large larvae disappear so those may be pupating.

Overall I’m excited with these results and expect to have a huge smattering of communal darklings available shortly. I’ll be pestering the life out of TJ for some IDs as well!

-Kyle