Oh my gosh, I never realized those were considered rare! I have dozens of ‘em!
In all this time I haven’t yet gone on HORG and identified all–well, any of my specimens. Who knows what else I’m missing!
Hang on, I’m gonna dump out the jar and find out how many different kinds of these little guys I have…
(…with the help of my lovely assistant Half-And-Half!)
Preliminary findings:
TheA. lehmeri-sized tabs make up a third of the jar! This is more than I remember having; I’m going to guesstimate that pile has at least 100.
On the left, you can see some even larger–and rarer!–specimens. I’m interested to see if HORG has documented these ones.
Now, on the Aspericardis lehmeri species card you linked, the description has this to say:
This large and distinguished occlupanid has been only found twice, and little is known of its habits. It has been conjectured that it lives in “big-box” shopping store environments, and occlupanologists are encouraged to keep watch for this species.
Two things.
1: I can confirm that these types of occlupanids frequent big-box habitats! Most of the ones I’ve collected were observed migrating to my family’s house from our local Costco. They seem to prefer large bags of potatoes or onions as hosts.
2: There’s a fancy latin name for people who study bread tabs?! How did I miss that before? Heck yeah, I’m an occlupanologist!
Excuse me for a second, I gotta go change my blog description real quick.
I wonder… Hypothetically, if I were to introduce myself, and someone asked the “what do you do?” question… How long would people think that was a serious scientific job?
I realized it might be possible to document one of these species in their natural surroundings! Off to the potato cupboard…
Aha!
Look how well they blend in with their environment. If not for my intervention, who knows how long they might have remained hidden? (As it is, they only made it until now because I personally dislike potatoes.)
Also, someone needs to clean the potato cupboard. Onion skins everywhere.
New friends! Soon they will join their brethren. But first, the onion bin…
Jackpot ahoy! A pristine A. lehmeri still loosely clinging to its host!
More field observations are needed to determine whether the A. lehmeri and the unknown species always appear on onion and potato bags, respectively. I think a portion of the A. lehmeri in my collection may actually have arrived on mesh bags containing lemons.
One coincidence worth noting is that both of the host bags here are made of a combination of plastic film and plastic mesh materials. Whether this holds any actual significance remains unclear.
