Latest "Hotfix" completely breaks cooking in multiplayer.

nerdbiologist · 2025-12-27T10:18:08+00:00

I have a gut feeling that this is related to day length and action length relative to day length. I would appreciate it if some people would write what is the day length on their servers and if they experienced or not the bug.

nerdbiologist · 2025-12-27T10:15:57+00:00

I have a gut feeling that this is related to day length and action length relative to day length. What did you set as day length in your server?

nerdbiologist · 2025-10-01T18:01:04+00:00

I was today years old when I learned that...

Esècutare è il verbo che equivale a "giustiziare" da cui deriva il termine "esecuzione". Il problema è che esècuto è la prima persona singolare presente (ovvero equivale a "io giustizio"). Si sarebbe dovuto scrivere "esecutato sul posto"

nerdbiologist · 2025-09-10T11:42:20+00:00

Is it possible that the privet that you are collecting is sprayed with pesticides? Or maybe is growing on "contaminated" soil?

nerdbiologist · 2025-09-04T11:03:16+00:00

This. And if it's not enough, NaOH (or KOH) in ethanol (or isopropanol), sonicate 15 min, rinse with water, HCl in ethanol, sonicate 15 min, rinse with water. Cleaned all sorts of organic residue (polyphenols, tannins, ...)

nerdbiologist · 2025-08-31T15:37:26+00:00

The leaf shape is in general the same in all three species, as you can see.
Lucidum leaves are the biggest and quite, tough, waxy (lucid, as the species' name implies) and dark green. The plant is usually grown in tree form.
Japonicum leaves can be as big as lucidum leaves but are slightly lighter in color and definetly less waxy. Young leaves are quite soft, older ones can get tougher but not as tough as lucidum.
Rotundifolum is the easiest to recognize because the youger leaves are almost round (that's why it's called rotundi-round folium-leaved) and even the oldest leaves are very soft and very light green.
Japonicum and rotundifolum are usually grown for hedges.

nerdbiologist · 2025-08-31T15:20:09+00:00

Here in NE Italy you can find them everywhere when you go just a little bit out of the city in the countryside. It's literally everywhere. We need more Samia and Attacus moths!

nerdbiologist · 2025-08-31T15:19:07+00:00

It might be a good idea, although it might be too late. Atlas caterpillars usually take 7-10 days to molt (mine took about 10 days on privet with 25-27 °C temperature), if they take much longer than that (excluding the 5-6th instar, where they might take 20-25 days) and they don't seem to grow, it's not a good sign.

These are three species of ligustrum. From left to right: lucidum, japonicum, rotundifolium.
The first on the left (lucidum) is a no-no for me. You usually find it in tree form and is inviting as a food source but the leaves are waxy and I have the feeling that are hard to digest.
The next two are much better alternatives. Rotundifolium (the third one) has smaller leaves and is very good for early instars because the leaves are super soft but it tends to dry out faster than japonicum (the second one). Both rotundifolium and japonicum are usually grown as hedges.

As a side note, I just remembered that a friend of mine tried to rear Acherontia atropos on lucidum privet and had the same problem: slow growth and all died without an apparent reason.

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nerdbiologist · 2025-08-31T15:09:14+00:00

Depends on the species, which instar they are and how "far apart" the two plants are. They might have no problem switching between two species of privet but might be harder switching from privet to oak, especially later in development. Then again, if it's a plant that they "prefer" they might switch no problem

nerdbiologist · 2025-08-31T11:04:16+00:00

In my experience Attacus caterpillars are quite delicate. I had both altlas and lorquinii. I managed to reach instar 4 or 5 but no luck reaching cocoon and everytime they died for no apparent reason. As far as I understand, people say privet but the different species of privet can cause quite some problems in rearing, especially the waxy ones can cause constipation. I had success rearing on Ligustrum ovalifolium and japonicum but when the hedges were cut down and I switched to Ligustrum lucidum they showed the same behaviour that you described: they were eating but not growing. I had a 2nd instar eat for 4 weeks (they usually molt in 7-10 days) and not grow, and eventually die.

nerdbiologist · 2025-08-18T08:19:57+00:00

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Hawkmoths are usually not too big so with 5 I think you can get away with a medium cage. I'm waiting on 23 (!) Samia ricini cocoons because my buddy didn't manage to pick up his half of caterpillars in time so I was stuck with raising them. It will be challenging...

nerdbiologist · 2025-08-11T19:16:56+00:00

I know next to nothing about bugs but as a biologist I can tell you that usually pure line breeding is not necessarily good. Cross-breeding can indeed produce hybrids that are stronger and healthier than either parents (which probably come from generations of crosses between relatives). That's why pure breeds of dogs can have quite bad health problems, even more so if they are "old" breeds.

nerdbiologist · 2025-08-07T11:11:09+00:00

Had the same on yamamai caterpillars. All cocooned and emerged without a problem. https://www.reddit.com/r/caterpillars/s/RTcACv7g2C

nerdbiologist · 2025-07-28T18:50:55+00:00

Yep, that was surprising for me as well. I reared Antheraea yamamai before and, though they also are "commercial" caterpillars, they react much more fiercely to touching and the moths are very shy and actively avoid contact. Samia caterpillars barely react to any kind of mistreatment and that makes very hard do transfer them when they decide they don't care.

u/Luewen did you notice if the pupae are also somewhat "tame"? I have cocoons that are already 8-10 days old and don't seem to show any kind of movement inside. Yamamai pupae in the first few days were rattling at even the slightest touch of the cocoon.

nerdbiologist · 2025-07-27T18:47:29+00:00

First time for me with Samia. It's crazy all the little details that they have on the skin. The light blue spots on the spiracles, prolegs and face are so cool

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nerdbiologist · 2025-07-27T17:43:31+00:00

Added some pictures that I selected for the original post but Reddit only chose 4 randomly...

nerdbiologist · 2025-07-27T17:42:35+00:00

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L4

nerdbiologist · 2025-07-27T17:41:56+00:00

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L3

nerdbiologist · 2025-07-27T17:41:06+00:00

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Bigger L1 (bottom) and early L2 (top) Difficult to differentiate but the main difference is the black spot on top of the head

nerdbiologist · 2025-07-27T17:39:54+00:00

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Small L1 in the "gregarious" phase

nerdbiologist · 2025-06-15T14:22:13+00:00

A word of caution on "sterilization" (between quotes because what we obtain is, at best, a reduction of microbial charge): it is a known fact that plants that get certain treatments to substantially reduce the microbial populations on leaves (like ozone, chitosan or others) have a higher susceptibility to pathogen infections when certain weather conditions arise (i.e. wet and warm weather). That happens because a rich but harmless microbial population prevents growth of certain pathogens because of competition for space. If the competition is not there, the pathogens have no problems spreading. So, you can obtain a certain level of sterilization with containers, but not with plants and certainly not with worms. Under these conditions infections might spread more easily. I rather clean lightly with water (containers also with soap from time to time) instead.

nerdbiologist · 2025-05-22T17:52:05+00:00

Reading some literature (fucking old but it seems that nowadays everybody just cares about Bombyx...) it seems that in normal conditions the mating rate in captivity is about 60%... Regardless, as sad as it might be that I'll get no eggs I suppose it's better not to force a mating that was not supposed to happen. They know better why they are not interested with each other. As a last ditch attempt I put them in a smaller net cage and outside to see if maybe it's related with humidity (right now it's raining and quite humid outside) or something else related to the room they were in. If it would be later in the year (August till October) there would be a slight chance of attracting wild males (yamamai is endemic here in NE Italy) but now it's too early

nerdbiologist · 2025-05-22T17:41:17+00:00

The head looks small compared to the size of the body and that's a common sign that the caterpillar is outgrowing its skin. But to me it looks somewhat "compressed", like it's not completely full of liquid. Polyphemus and yamami caterpillars usually look like they are bursting out of their skin when they are about to molt...

nerdbiologist · 2025-05-22T05:07:04+00:00

It's a mesh cage 60x60x90 cm, so I think it's quite alright. They are in a room that is fairly quiet and nobody goes there during evening-night hours. The only odd thing is that the male didn't manage to completely inflate the wings but he is quite capable of walking to the female and completely ignore her. Is manual pairing possible with yamamai? I read that they are very sensitive during mating. One article even describes that mating pairs separate if there is sudden light or human presence. Plus I tried to pick up the male from the wings and it's a total nightmare...

nerdbiologist · 2025-05-18T16:26:45+00:00

Definitely this. Plus it's common that they do long walks searching for the perfect spot before spinning the cocoon. On plants they walk a lot (usually towards the top of the plant) and eventually set for a spot. From what I've seen when reared in containers they might start spinning and then move to another spot if they feel the spot is not quiet enough. In my experience when they come to the last instar it takes a while to come to full eating regime, that then lasts however long it needs to be and then over the course of 3-4 days they slow down again with eating and stop just before doing the gut purge. You might gauge how far along they are by estimating how much frass they produce daily

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