Winter chill sets in at Bellarine

Thursday and Friday last week my trusty LHISI student caretakers alerted me to the fact that the overnight temperatures in the enclosure dropped as low as 16 degrees. Too cold! I presumed (wrongly as it turns out), that the heat mat had broken. Other stakeholders in this program had said this had happened to them. Yesterday Siggy came home with a second heat mat for us. I am thinking of attaching it to the perspex sheet that sits on top of the enclosure. If need be, we can change the position of the heat source this way by moving the perspex sheet to the side/back or top of the enclosure. It's just a matter of trying it out.

Can you see Uno? His/her handsome leg and antennae are visible just behind the leaves at the front of the photo. Uno is growing before our eyes - noticeably longer in the abdomen since hatching. We are too scared to poke around too closely with a ruler, but I reckon the insect is about half a centimetre longer since hatching on Wednesday!

No siblings for Uno this weekend. The Zoo's group of eggs laid at a similar time have continued to hatch. We do not have the perfect climate control that they have though.

I met Mary this morning, from another local school, who also has a colony to hatch. They have had quite varied and colder conditions than us, and not as humid. And none hatched yet. So I think this emphasises the importance of a stable position with not too much door opening and poking around. Also, we are lucky that our enclosure can stay at school and I pop up to do weekend checks/waters. Rather than carting it around to someone's house to look after on the weekend.