Phobaeticus serratipes
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Phobaeticus serratipes , female |
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| ( GR Gray , 1835) |
Phobaeticus serratipes is one of the largest representatives of the ghost horror . Occasionally the species is also referred to as a giant stick insect or as a "walking branch", the former being a collective name that cannot be clearly assigned to this species and the latter being better and more appropriately used for Pharnacia westwoodi . In English-speaking "Giant Malayan Stick Insect" is in use, a name which one now also in the German form as Malayan giant stick insect found.
features
The females have long been known as the longest known insects . This was only true for the total length, including the legs, measured from the ends of the protarsi to those of the metatarsi . With the front legs typically stretched forward, a total length of 555 millimeters could be determined in a female from Tasek Chini from the Malay Peninsula . Currently, this record with a length of almost 570 millimeters is granted to the species Phobaeticus chani, which was first described by Philip Bragg in 2008 . The greatest body length in an insect (from the tip of the head to the end of the abdomen ) was found to be 357 millimeters in Phobaeticus chani . Previously, a female of Phobaeticus kirbyi from Sarawak ( Borneo ) was 328 millimeters long as the insect with the greatest body length. The females of Phobaeticus serratipes , on the other hand, can only reach a body length of a maximum of 280 millimeters. In addition to monochrome apple-green animals, there are also completely dark and more rarely light brown colored animals. In addition, there is also a green local shape that shows many white dots (tubercles) on the upper side of the chest and abdomen, with a particular clustering on the metanotum and the first abdominal segments . In animals with a green base color, the rear edges of the abdominal segments, which are light brown on top, are particularly easy to see. The tarsi are light to orange brown.
The males remain significantly smaller with a body length of 170 millimeters. They can be almost completely green or almost brown on top. The underside is green even in brown males. On the sides of the mesonotum a turquoise colored line shines , which is sharply separated from the black line running underneath. In some females, a faint blue-green stripe can be seen at this point. While the females do not have wings, the adult males have short wings. The scale-like forewings, designed as tegmina , are only one centimeter long and each bear a dark shoulder bulge. They cover the base of the hind wings, which only reach halfway through the third abdominal segment. Both pairs of wings are lined at the front edge with a light-colored strip at the front and black-brown behind it, which when the wings are in place form a light-colored band at the top and dark at the bottom. The remaining wings are light brown in color, with the front third of the hind wings being thickened as well as the front wings.
The antennae protrude above the fore legs in both sexes and are therefore somewhat longer in the longer-legged males. The legs, which are triangular in cross-section, are tried and tested on the lower edges of the thighs and rails of the middle and rear legs, as well as on the lower edges of the fore thighs with short, pointed, backward-pointing thorns (toothed). Most noticeable, however, is the upper edge of the fore legs, which looks like a saw due to the larger thorns here. In the males, the thorns are black-brown, so that they are particularly noticeable in predominantly green specimens. At the end of the lower edges of the middle and hind legs there is a larger spike each (i.e. two per leg end).
Systematics
The species was described in 1835 by George Robert Gray using a male as Cladoxerus serratipes . This male has been deposited as a holotype in the Natural History Museum in London . Only three years later, in 1838, Burmeister described a female under the name Bacteria acanthopus and deposited the holotype in the Museum of Natural History at the Humboldt University in Berlin . Although Kirby had already recognized this name in 1904 as a synonym for the species described by Gray, the species and especially the animals that have been bred since the 1980s were almost always addressed with the specific epithet " acanthopus ". It was not until the publication of Hennemann from 1993 clarified this situation again.
Another work by Conle and Hennemann, published in 2008, also revealed that the species described by Bates in 1865 as Phibalosoma maximum and the species described by JAG Rehn as Bactridium grande in 1920 are also identical to Phobaeticus serratipes .
Following this and through various new generic descriptions or new assignments, in addition to the Basionym Cladoxerus serratipes used by Gray, the following, in some cases still frequently used, invalid synonyms can be found for this species :
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Occurrence and way of life
The home of Phobaeticus serratipes is the Malay Peninsula . The species is said to also occur in Singapore as well as Borneo , Sumatra and Java .
The animals usually hang on the middle and hind legs in the branches of the food plant. Often the front legs are stretched forward, making the animals look even more like a long branch ( mimetic ). If they are grabbed by one leg, they throw it off ( autotomy ) and flee or let themselves fall and then flee. Nymphs can regenerate their legs in whole or in part (depending on the number of remaining molts) during the next molt . In the process, rolled-up leg systems are formed that have stretched and lengthened after the next moult. Animals with only two to three legs are still able to get food and are therefore viable. The life expectancy of adult females can be up to a year.
Reproduction
Phobaeticus serratipes , like most ghosts, is capable of facultative parthenogenesis . In the absence of males, the animals can reproduce parthenogenetically for generations without showing signs of degeneration . The females shoot their eggs away from them with a jerk of the abdomen in order to achieve a certain dispersion of the eggs falling on the ground. In the event of a malfunction, an egg is also often thrown away to distract the potential attacker. The eggs are lightly flattened and a good five millimeters long and four millimeters wide. After about six months, the nymphs, which are 55 millimeters in total length and 23 millimeters in length, hatch from them, which are quite long but also very thin. The legs of the hatchlings are ringed beige and brown and the body, especially the abdomen, is lively beige and brown. The older nymphs increasingly resemble the adults . After about four to six months, they are adult themselves .
Terrarium keeping
The species can be fed in the terrarium with blackberry leaves , but also with oak , hazelnut and red beech . However, because of their size, you should offer the giant stick insects a correspondingly spacious terrarium and not overfill it with forage plants. Temperatures from 22 ° C and a humidity of 75 percent, which can be achieved by regular spraying with lukewarm water, are sufficient for breeding.
From the phasmid Study Group is Phobaeticus serratipes both under the PSG number 25 performed as well under the number 75th The first strain introduced was introduced in 1980 and, like the eggs imported in 2007, came from the Tapah Mountains in Perak .
photos
Eggs
Newly hatched nymph
Portrait of a female
Portrait of a brown male
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Siegfried Löser: Exotic insects, millipedes and arachnids - instructions for keeping and breeding. Ulmer, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-8001-7239-9 .
- ↑ a b Insectarium of the Aquazoo Düsseldorf
- ^ A b Paul D. Brock : Phasmida Species File Online . Version 2.1 / 3.5. (accessed on June 14, 2009)
- ↑ Oliver Zompro : Basic knowledge of pasmids - biology - keeping - breeding. Sungaya Verlag, Berlin 2012, p. 52, ISBN 978-3-943592-00-9 .
- ↑ a b Phasmatodea page by Oskar V. Conle and Frank H. Hennemann
- ^ Paul D. Brock: Phasmida Species File Online . Version 2.1 / 3.5. (accessed on June 14, 2009) Entry on Phobaeticus chani
- ↑ Oliver Zompro: The longest stick insect - the longest living insect , Arthropoda 16 (4) December 2008, Sungaya-Verlag Kiel. ISSN 0943-7274
- ^ Spiegel Online for the new description of Phobaeticus chani
- ↑ a b Christoph Seiler, Sven Bradler, Rainer Koch: Phasmids - care and breeding of ghosts, stick insects and walking leaves in the terrarium. Bede, Ruhmannsfelden 2000, ISBN 3-933646-89-8 .
- ^ William Forsell Kirby: A synonymic catalog of Orthoptera. 1. Orthoptera Euplexoptera, Cursoria et Gressoria. (Forficulidae, Hemimeridae, Blattidae, Mantidae, Phasmidae). 1904 (online: [1] )
- ↑ a b c Roy Bäthe, Anke Bäthe, Mario Fuß: Phasmiden. Schüling Verlag, Münster 2009, ISBN 978-3-86523-073-7 .
- ^ Frank H. Hennemann & Oskar V. Conle: Revision of Oriental Phasmatodea: The tribe Pharnaciini Günther, 1953, including the description of the world's longest insect, and a survey of the family Phasmatidae Gray, 1835 with keys to the subfamilies and tribes ( Phasmatodea: “Anareolatae”: Phasmatidae). (Zootaxa 1906), Magnolia Press, Auckland, New Zealand, 316 pp .; 30 cm. 15 Oct. 2008, ISBN 978-1-86977-271-0 (paperback), ISBN 978-1-86977-272-7 (online edition) (pdf of the abstract on mapress.com ; PDF file; 47 kB)
- ↑ Phasmid Study Group Culture List (English)
