Rainbow pede New ? info

Hi,
Welcome to our forum and thanx for sharing your observations.
It's right that on many english speaking websites the info is given that they lay their eggs in faeces, but it is known for a long time (1980: By Aouti) that millipedes of the order [lexicon]Spirobolida[/lexicon] use chewed plant material or substrate for the egg capsule. The wrong information in the internet is based on the fact that they insert the egg capsule in their rectum to absorb the water and the egg capsules have often the same size as the faeces.
Some [lexicon]Spirostreptida[/lexicon] from arid regions do this as well but pillmillipedes Glomerida, Sphaerotheriida? ) really use "faecal material" to form the egg capsule.

Yeah, that finding was very good. So you can see that you have eggs and you know that decreasing humidity can be fatal. Maybe the egg capsules of other species have the same chape.

The hard thing is that if the substrate is too wet the eggs mold, if it is too dry they dry out. The millipedes normally lay them on a place where are good conditions. But in tanks the conditions are often not stable enough.

A few hints: a temperature of about 24-25°C are good for incubation. The characteristics of the substrate which is used for the capsule is important. In the tropics are often loamy soils and clay has a big waterholding capacity. With a few species I made good results with some clay mixed under the substrate.

Last year a handfull of our forummembers had juvenils from A. rubropunctatus but many of them died of unknown reason. In my case only 6 of about 40 survived but these ones do very well. So the small ones under 1cm need "special" conditions.

Let us hear if you got some new experiences :bigthump:

Hi,
Sorry, my upper post was a little weird and wrong.
Most millipedes use absorbed earthy material for coating the eggs.

The observations of Linda are quite good and the figure is also very good.

Here are is the observations from A. Aouti how Pachybolus laminatus does make the oothecae in detail:

1) Building the nest by eating the substrate (earth/sand/plant material) and compressing the rest to the wall of the nest. duration: about 2 hours

2) Pellets released by the rectum on the posterior legs and transporting it through the legs to the anterior legs near the head.

3) The pellet is formed by the head (Clypeus) and the legs to a small ship like shape (the inside is the imprint by the head).

4) The small ship is directed to the vulvae and an egg which is surrounded by a adherence secretion is stick into the ship.

5) Through a pushing movement of the head the anterior of the ship is turning down to a open sphere and after that the legs and head forms it to a sphere. While these steps the millipedes can’t move the posterior legs.

6) The moist ootheca is transported to the posterior legs and remains there. A new pellet is released by the rectum on the legs posterior to the waiting ootheca and is like in 1) transported to the head. The anal valves stay open and the moist ootheca is inserted into the rectum to absorb the water.

7) When the next fresh ootheca is finished and on the posterior legs, the dry ootheca is released, then a pellet is released and the cycle begins again.

Aouti found out that this species normally takes 24 hours to digest the normal food. In this case the absorbed material from building the nest is released after only 2 hours for making the oothecae and so it is only barely digested. Only the first oothecae are made of real faeces and these ones are darker then the others.

So most of the material is no real faece but extra inserted material for egg laying. There are several glands in the rectum of females which modify the absorbed substrate. Also the millipedes absorb more earth than they will do in normal eating. So it is lot more than just faeces they use for the egg capsule.

Other millipedes do this in a similar way. Flatmillipedes e.g. don't use the legs, only the rectum to create a dome like nest where all eggs are in it.

Hope you understand the explanations.

I added some figures modified after Aouti, A. (1980): La confection des Ootheques pendant la ponte chez Pachybolus laminatus Cook diplopode chilognathe.