A wild Eupolyphaga species appears!
adult male
We have to interrupt our roach broadcast from the Thailand trip to update you guys on the first successful purchase of the year - a wild caught Eupolyphaga species hailing from China, Guangxi Province, Guilin City, Yanshan Town.
Eupolyphaga is a cockroach genus which mainly endemic to China, especially in the mountainous regions of Western China. It is still poorly unknown due to its secretive habits, which make it not easily detected in the natural environment.
Eupolyphaga collection points in China
This also leads to it not being widespread on the roach keeping hobby. Most of the keepers outside China have probably only come across with Eupolyphaga sinensis, the Chinese Medicinal Roach.
Some efforts on their research have recently been made, and produced excelent papers, if you are interested in further reading about this wonderful Genus, please refer to these two papers (with downloadable links).
For quite some time, I have been wanting to get my hands on some of these species, but somehow they have been turned out to be quite elusive on the Chinese roach market, even they seem to be pretty well distributed all over China, particularly diverse in Yunnan province…
Eupolyphaga collection points in Yunnan
Then suddenly, seems two species have popped up for grabs.
Eupolyphaga sp "Guilin" - Wild caught individuals
I managed to get my hands on one of them, and purchased 70 mixed sized individuals. Most arrived well with the exception of 4 nymphs.
Eupolyphaga sp "Guilin" Composition
This particular species comes from the southern province of Guangxi, Guilin City, Yanshan Town, which in itself is already interesting, as it doesn’t show up in any of the research papers collection areas. Unfortunately this makes a potential identification more difficult.
I contacted Dr. Clyde Qiu (Lu Qiu) and sent him some photos, and interestingly enough, I was told that SWU (Institute of Entomology, College of Plant Protection, Southwest University, Beibei, Chongqing, P. R. China) also had purchased some individuals from the same seller for DNA coding.
As far as I could see, this species seems to be undescribed, for it has some very distinct characteristics, not present in other species: (amateur analysis LOL)
Eupolyphaga sp "Guilin" male pronotum
- tegmina not maculated being the most distinct of them all.
- uniform coloration (bright brown/orange)
- pronotum with pilose anterior margin
- underside of the body with yellow coloration
- tegmina almost twice as long as the body
We will just have to wait for the results to come out and hopefully soon enough we will have a name for it. For now it is only Eupolyphaga sp “Guangxi, Guilin City, Yanshan Town”.
In the wild, their habitat is normally constituted by dry soil and humus. Interestingly enough I got some of its collection site substrate, which I combined with more humus and leaf litter as I rehoused them all into a highly ventilated critter keeper box with screen mesh to prevent the entry of other insects.
I now have 64 mixed sized individuals, as two ended up dying during the night. It seems they are very susceptible of dying if kept turned upside down (belly up) for long periods. It seems that I had not given them enough substrate to dig through. This has now been corrected (the substrate depth is around 1.5 inches or 4cm) and I hope that they can now remain stable and start breeding for me.
I have 6 or 7 adult males, 2 adult females, and 2 or 3 pre-adult nymphs. Hopefully, the males will be able to mate with the females and give me some oothecas to ensure their continuation asap.
The plan is to make these quickly available to other keepers in Europe and the US and to try to expand the Eupolyphaga species diversity in the hobby by introducing as many as possible.
To wrap up the post, a quick composition of Eupolyphaga sinensis and Eupolyphaga sp side by side. I cannot stand their smaller size compared to E.sinensis…. makes them even more cute!
Eupolyphaga sinensis (middle) vs Eupolyphaga sp "Guilin" (left and right)
Thank you very much for your time, hope you have enjoyed it, and see you soon.
Cheers!