[agrosse]

Sorry, no pictures and I don't have any isopods anymore.

I am also inclined to believe that Giant Orange are NOT P scaber. My Giant Orange bred and completed life cycles sooo much faster than P. scaber are supposed to.

Where did you find your control data for scaber reproduction? I'd like to compare it to what I'm getting in my normal, calico, and Dalmatian cultures to see how they match up...

 

[hypostatic]

Sorry, no pictures and I don't have any isopods anymore.
I am also inclined to believe that Giant Orange are NOT P scaber. My Giant Orange bred and completed life cycles sooo much faster than P. scaber are supposed to.

The paper in the first post says P. scaber reaches sexual maturity at around 3-4 months (also has an orange phenotype). But I think general "knowledge" is that they mature around/over 1 year of age (See: Life cycle stages of woodlice). I believe here is the confusion.

I think I'd side with the breeding paper on color genetics on the age of sexual maturity, since they do look at that carefully and use it to establish their crosses.

 

[radiata]

Interesting. What are the different requirements? I've kept my scaber and oranges the same way.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the location of the sample populations. For example if you collected scaber populations from Arizona vs Georgia. The Arizona scaber would be adapted to a more arid environment while the Georgia would be adapted to a higher humidity and therefore would culture differently? I dunno, thoughts?

Except for the Oranges, I mist my isopods twice a week when I feed them. I mist the Oranges only once a month.

I've also used the Oranges as a "clean up crew" in a large Bean Beetle culture I've been playing with. They're multiplying there despite the relatively drier conditions. I add some water to the ABG substrate if I think it is too dry.

 

[agrosse]

Except for the Oranges, I mist my isopods twice a week when I feed them. I mist the Oranges only once a month.

I've also used the Oranges as a "clean up crew" in a large Bean Beetle culture I've been playing with. They're multiplying there despite the relatively drier conditions. I add some water to the ABG substrate if I think it is too dry.

Have you put normal scaber in the same conditions?

Theres no doubt that other isopods like more moisture, especially philoscia muscorum, which like it downright swampy, but of the 60ish scaber I've collected they have all been in dry upland pine forest. Of the seven species of isopods I have collected locally scaber inhabit the driest habitat.

I thought for sure you were going to tell me your oranges liked more humidity! Ha ha ha.....

As a side note, I also found this blog documenting an orange scaber population in Europe....

The Skokholm Blog

Also this website has a list of documented locations for scaber

issg Database: Distribution of Porcellio scaber

Spain being listed as one of the locations if the orange did indeed come from Spain......

And using the paper listed in the initial post and the blog link above its accepted that there are orange populations of scaber in Canada and Europe.

The more I read up on this the more I lean to the them being one and the same.

Anyone know an entomologist that specializes in isopods?

 

[Aquarimax]

Have there bene any developments with the orange Dalmatian Morph? In another thread 'Rare and Uncommon Isopods' the 'Koi' Morph is mentioned. Is that morph a result of this project?



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[agrosse]

Yes. So I got in touch with an enthusiast in Germany who is working with something that looks like what I was calling orange Dalmatian. He has them labeled as "koi" and since he has been working with them longer and to avoid confusion I'm going with his label.

As far as an update: babies are still growing....

I have 3-4 baby koi's, a bunch of orange het koi, and a small young colony from a Dalmatian/koi cross.

I'll see if I can get some pictures to put up soon!

 

[Judy S]

how 'bout appalosa...or pinto...just suggestin'..... am interested in how they are used in bean beetle cultures, but do not want to go off topic....

 

[Aquarimax]

Yes. So I got in touch with an enthusiast in Germany who is working with something that looks like what I was calling orange Dalmatian. He has them labeled as "koi" and since he has been working with them longer and to avoid confusion I'm going with his label.

As far as an update: babies are still growing....

I have 3-4 baby koi's, a bunch of orange het koi, and a small young colony from a Dalmatian/koi cross.

I'll see if I can get some pictures to put up soon!

Thanks very much for the update! I am glad to hear of the success of the project, and look forward to further developments.

 

[agrosse]

Dad and his girls


I apologize for the bad pics. These guys are still pretty small and hard to get to sit still to get pictures of them.

Koi and normal orange babies

Koi baby

Another koi baby

Another koi baby

 

[hypostatic]

http:https://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/08/05/3ac182c18ccd67728f8d6b66ad1663d4.jpg[/IMG[/quote]

HAH! Koi isos! That one in the middle looks pretty interesting. If you're into breeding the isos, I think shrimp breeding would be right up your alley.

 

[Aquarimax]

Fantastic! Thank you for posting the pictures...it is interesting to see how they are turning out. I will look forward to seeing how they look once they are fully colored up!

 

[Tykie]

I would love to buy some when they are available. Add me on the Wanted list

 

[agrosse]

Updated pictures.....

And had two of these guys pop out. They have pale eyes and a completely white carapace.

Not the most interesting, but if they stay this way, these guys should be complete recessives and should make isolating phenotypes a lot easier.....

 

[orin]

I have seen a lot of light colored and speckled oranges in the nearly twenty years since I isolated them, but never one so cool as that male.

One problem I see is you used old, mated adult females and you cannot in any way ensure any of your young were sired by that father. Young dalmatian commonly start out with no spots and the "koi" coloration is not unusual for young standard orange. You might be better off throwing the male into an orange culture and pulling out the color form as it appears when you have enough individuals to start a colony. Either way I wish you luck.

 

[agrosse]

Thanks for the info Orin!

I have been working in virgin females into the culture with the koi male. I used the mated females to jump start the project and each female is pulled when eggs show and that clutch becomes its own culture. I guess we will see how this works.

So here is the update......

As orin pointed out, the scaber I originally pointed out above thought to be koi, turned out to be mottled orange. I got a little too excited and jumped the gun.....

The good news........The white, pale eyed individuals are actually developing darker red eyes and getting orange spots as they molt. Hopefully I will get a good sex ratio from these so that I can totally isolate the morph.

On a different note, there has been a lot of weird things poping up in the offspring and I found a pair of odd looking oranges...

I don't know if this is related to the koi morph but I've isolated it to figure out what's going on here.....

 

[Aquarimax]

I found this unusual Dalmatian in my culture recently. Though the spot in the lower right area is actually a bit of food, note that this specimen does indeed sport orange markings:

My Dalmatian culture has three different sources...I am not sure which one this came from. I think I will try to isolate it like Alan has done.

 

[agrosse]

Sweet! Are his eyes black? I have seen a few in my cultures with brown/orange spots. You should try and isolate it and let me know if it breeds true. My guess is that the Dalmatian mutation just turns off and on the gene (or genes) that controls color and these are calico individuals.

The reason I ask about the eyes is I'm working with what I'm calling 'ghost Dalmatian' which has pink eyes and purple spots. This was a result of the koi x Dalmatian cross. I'm fairly certain at this point the koi and orange Dalmatian are different mutations. I'm getting lots of weird but awesome things.

Heres the ghost Dalmatian. Yours anything like this? It would be cool if it popped up somewhere else.....

 

[Aquarimax]

I will try to find that individual again and get a good look at its eyes...it would be cool if it turned out to be a ghost Dalmatian like yours. It makes a lot of sense what you said about calicoes...Dalmatian with the calico trait would probably look like that. I am really looking forward to the potential isopod projects in the near future. 😀


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[blacksheep998]

Hello everyone!

I've been following this post for awhile now but haven't commented yet. Figured I'd share my own isopod crossbreeding experiment.

I've been in touch with agrosse on and off on another forum, and have been documenting my own experiments over there.

My project has been slightly different from his in that I didn't start with an orange dalmatian. I had oranges and dalmatians and decided to try crossbreeding them.

My results have been quite different from his too.

My first generation of offspring were plain gray, with a couple calicos mixed in. I was expecting grays though, since I already knew from earlier experiments that the orange color is a single-gene recessive trait and suspected that the dalmatian color was as well.

Their offspring though are proving to be much more interesting.

Thus far in the second generation I've gotten 123 grays, 54 orange, 75 dalmatians, and 10 orange dalmatians.

Here's the orange dalmatians.

This more or less lines up with the ratio I was expecting to get, which was a 9:3:3:1 ratio of those colors, respectively. I think there's still some more orange dalmatians mixed in with the regular ones, but unless they develop some orange spots it's really hard to tell them apart. The orange dals do have red eyes, but they're still fairly small and hard to see.

Also, I seem to have discovered a similar thing as Aquarimax.

I mentioned earlier that I've previously experimented with crossing orange isopods with wild type grays. This is how I knew that the orange color is single gene recessive. But in all my experiments, I never got any calicos.

Calicos popped up in my crossbreeds though. So I started to wonder if maybe some of my dalmatians had the calico trait. I looked through them and actually found a few. Check out the large one by my thumb in this picture.

I'm sure this isn't an orange dalmatian. It's got black eyes and some gray spots. It can only be a calico dalmatian.

This gives me some other cool info too. If I'm right and none of my oranges have the calico trait, but my dalmatians and some of my F1 crossbreeds do, then it means that the calico gene must be dominant to the plain gray color.

I've also discovered something else quite interesting.

In one batch of F1 crossbreeds, and in only that one batch, I got some orange offspring. This was an orange female in a container of dalmatian males. I'm 100% positive that she never mated with an orange male because I removed her from my orange container when she was much too small to mate, and she had already produced one batch of offspring that were all gray.

Initially I thought that maybe a male in my dalmatian container was carrying the orange trait, so I decided to try another experiment.

I took all the orange F1 offspring and isolated them into their own container. If their father was a dalmatian carrying the orange trait then they'd be carrying the dalmatian trait and so their offspring would be 25% orange dalmatians. But that didn't turn out to be the case.

Their offspring are all orange. This means that their father couldn't have been a dalmatian, and the only possibility left is that Porcellio scaber is apparently capable of parthenogenesis.

Anyway, thanks for reading! Feel free to post any questions, I'll be happy to answer to the best of my abilities!

 

[agrosse]

Interesting stuff Ryan.

This is a good time to show the difference between 'Orange Dalmatian" and 'koi'. As you can see, the OD looks as you would expect an orange version of the dalmatian gene to appear. The 'Koi' gene is expressed in bigger patches and the edges fade where the dalmatian spots tend to be crisp.

These baby 'koi' are a good representation the range of the phenotype.

I'm also getting some normals showing signs of what I believe is the same gene

They are still pretty young though so it'll be interesting to see how it develops as they mature.