<i>Hynobius tokyoensis</i> egg sacs

[TJ]

 

[TJ]

 

[TJ]

 

[TJ]

These are all pictures taken at a pet shop today

(Message edited by TJ on March 16, 2004)

 

[jennifer]

Tim, those close-up shots are to die for. They almost look like you would need a microscope to get so close.

 

[paris]

what does the pet shop do with them? if they are anything like our incompetent shops over here the eggs would shurely die. do the sell the sacs?? my local pet co is told to throw eggs from leo geckos away and not try to raise them.

 

[paris]

hey also-in those sacs- are the others more at risk from fungus from bad eggs?

 

[TJ]

They're collected from the wild to sell. Some people (like myself in the case of Hynobius at least) prefer to raise sals from eggs. Also, kids buy them for fun when they're sold cheaply at non-specialty shops. When they hatch at the specialty shops, the shops sell the larvae.

 

[paris]

how are you sure they are from the sals they claim they are? i mean even if they were collected with locality data from a area that had only 1 species of hynobid how are you sure that are sure what they are and arent mislabeled?

 

[TJ]

One of the advantages of raising Hynobiids from eggs is that you know for sure what species they are because the shape, size, texture, transparency of the egg sacs differ from species to species, sometimes quite dramatically. The range of H.tokyoensis overlaps that of H.lichenatus and H.nigrescens but it doesn't share habitats with them as it is a lowland species. Since it's a lowland species, its eggs can be found easier because they're laid in areas close to human habitation -- which explains why its eggs appear in pet shops much more frequently than those of the two other sympatric species.

 

[TJ]

I was pretty sure I'd posted this before but couldn't find it so here it is again:

H.tokyoensis is D, while H.lichenatus is E and H.nigrescens is F. See what I mean by them being dramatically different?

 

[TJ]

CORRECTION: H.tokyoensis is B, while H.kimurae is D

 

[TJ]

 

[pin-pin]

Amazing, you photographed a larva hatching!

 

[jennifer]

Tim, do they all swim out the small hole in the end of the egg sac like in the photo? That's amazing! I always assumed that they were able to wiggle free from the egg sac, or it deteriorated when it was time for hatching.

 

[TJ]

Jen, interesting question, but one that I can't answer with any confidence as I haven't been observant enough. I wonder too if the ends of the egg sac are the first places to open up and the main means of exit.

This evening, I was forced to perform radical surgery on two egg sacs to save the viable larvae in them because there was simply no means of exit that I could see:

The larvae in the sac had been dying one by one. The sac simply had not deteriorated fast enough to keep pace with their development, it seems. Clipping an end of the sac results in the outward flow of the contents.

Anyway, I'm comfortable with my decision as I have a dozen or so H.tokyoensis larvae to raise, and still have one sac to go that should yield another five larvae or so. But I had great success with H.tokyoensis hatching last year so it's quite a disappointment

My twin H.nebulosus sacs, by contrast, have yielded up a whopping 100 or so larvae in total that are about two weeks old now and very robust. I've already started lining up homes for them

I've taken hundreds of photos of them and their development, some quite nice but none of which I've posted yet. Maybe I'll save them for a Caudate Culture series

(Message edited by TJ on April 13, 2004)

 

[greg]

Okay. this may be a dumb question. I've seen Hynobius for sale on German price lists, and they are apparently in pet stores in Japan. But I've never seen them available within the U.S. Is there a reason for that? I mean, other than PetCo not knowing what they are (hasn't stopped them before).

In other words, where would a fella in the U.S. get any? That egg mass ROCKS!


greg