gzophia
Arachnoknight
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2024
- Messages
- 176
Hello everyone,
I live in an area where Xystocheir dissecta is extremely common. In late winter/early spring, you can find them by the dozens at night with a UV light. In fact, on Valentine's Day two months ago, I was in my own front yard looking for bugs and I found 50-100 specimens with a UV light, all glowing a brilliant cyan color. Some were crawling, some were digging, and others were crawling. It was beautiful.
To detail their habitat: My yard has a large oak tree (Quercus sp. I think), and it often drops leaves to the ground. We don't remove the leaves, and they accumulate over the years to form a thick covering of oak. Also, we mulched our yard a long time ago followed by a covering of coconut fiber. Both projects failed abysmally and everything decomposed, mixing with the oak leaves. Underneath all that, our yard has muddy and clay-based dirt.
Now, for my own observations: These are very fluorescent millipedes (1" to 1.5" in length) that glow like scorpions under UV light. They seem to come out on moist and cool nights (late winter/early spring as I mentioned) to explore and mate. In the summer, they are absent save for the coolest and most moist locations; you can find many of their dead remains underneath their former hiding spots. I have only seen one or two juveniles (brown and very slightly fluorescent), but have not seen eggs yet. I have also never seen this species eating. When disturbed, they will ball up and release feces as well as toxins that smell horrible (I believe the compound contains cyanide).
Now, I'm going to go off on a tangent, so skip the next two paragraphs if you want to save time.
As a younger kid, I had a fear of this species that was so great that it became like a phobia. I stopped going outside to look for bugs and would avoid going near rocks and logs out of fear. I'd also have dreams and thoughts of them which disturbed me greatly. Looking back, I guess it was their unique appearance and defense chemicals that scared me-- of all the millipede defenses I have foolishly triggered, I feel like these guys have the nastiest one. And their ghostly, fluorescent shells they leave behind after passing on creeped me out.
To be completely honest, they still scare me. There's nothing wrong with them; they're just little guys living life in a place they belonged in for thousands if not millions of years. But I still find it hard to even look at them. If this wasn't the case, I would probably have done some research and tried to keep them in captivity temporarily to study them.
Anyways, my personal experience aside-- I was wondering if anyone here knew about these millipedes, be it knowledge about husbandry or natural history. I don't know much about them aside from their habitat and the small observations I detailed above. I might face my fears and collect some to temporarily observe, but would like to know if anyone had info before I did so.
Thanks.
I live in an area where Xystocheir dissecta is extremely common. In late winter/early spring, you can find them by the dozens at night with a UV light. In fact, on Valentine's Day two months ago, I was in my own front yard looking for bugs and I found 50-100 specimens with a UV light, all glowing a brilliant cyan color. Some were crawling, some were digging, and others were crawling. It was beautiful.
To detail their habitat: My yard has a large oak tree (Quercus sp. I think), and it often drops leaves to the ground. We don't remove the leaves, and they accumulate over the years to form a thick covering of oak. Also, we mulched our yard a long time ago followed by a covering of coconut fiber. Both projects failed abysmally and everything decomposed, mixing with the oak leaves. Underneath all that, our yard has muddy and clay-based dirt.
Now, for my own observations: These are very fluorescent millipedes (1" to 1.5" in length) that glow like scorpions under UV light. They seem to come out on moist and cool nights (late winter/early spring as I mentioned) to explore and mate. In the summer, they are absent save for the coolest and most moist locations; you can find many of their dead remains underneath their former hiding spots. I have only seen one or two juveniles (brown and very slightly fluorescent), but have not seen eggs yet. I have also never seen this species eating. When disturbed, they will ball up and release feces as well as toxins that smell horrible (I believe the compound contains cyanide).
Now, I'm going to go off on a tangent, so skip the next two paragraphs if you want to save time.
As a younger kid, I had a fear of this species that was so great that it became like a phobia. I stopped going outside to look for bugs and would avoid going near rocks and logs out of fear. I'd also have dreams and thoughts of them which disturbed me greatly. Looking back, I guess it was their unique appearance and defense chemicals that scared me-- of all the millipede defenses I have foolishly triggered, I feel like these guys have the nastiest one. And their ghostly, fluorescent shells they leave behind after passing on creeped me out.
To be completely honest, they still scare me. There's nothing wrong with them; they're just little guys living life in a place they belonged in for thousands if not millions of years. But I still find it hard to even look at them. If this wasn't the case, I would probably have done some research and tried to keep them in captivity temporarily to study them.
Anyways, my personal experience aside-- I was wondering if anyone here knew about these millipedes, be it knowledge about husbandry or natural history. I don't know much about them aside from their habitat and the small observations I detailed above. I might face my fears and collect some to temporarily observe, but would like to know if anyone had info before I did so.
Thanks.