Favoritos de psophis_zelun

Once again, hundreds++ in this location. Mating/crawling/falling/flying. There were other areas with only a few groupings of insects. None on the desert floor. Elevation approximately 500-600ft. Temperature 88 degrees.

??? Moth Lacewing ???
What is it?
1" +/- length. Clear Winged
striped / variegated body greenish body.

Thousands of individuals mating, flying, crawling in/around desert mountainside. No buzzing; just the sound of insects crawling/falling.

*No predators

This is a microscopic image of an egg and first instar Diogmites larva. Since the larvae of many robber flies, including Diogmites spp., are apparently poorly known, or at least were at one point, I wondered if I could capture adult robber flies and convince them to oviposit. This was more than easy for Diogmites females. Adults were collected from the USF campus. In the presence of moist sandy loam to sandy soil, females readily oviposited. Unfortunately, I had multiple females and species narrowing probably wouldn't be possible. I think it took 1-2 weeks for the eggs to hatch, maybe more. I've done a lot of reading on these larvae, which was very difficult, but researchers in the past have found these attached to the head bases of beetle grub larvae. I don't know how I'm going to feed first instar larvar, though. My goal is to rear these to adulthood, but there is so little known about these. Thankfully, they don't need to feed very often from what I've read, and can last 2 months without food or longer. If anybody has any tips for further rearing, I would greatly appreciate it.