I found unidentified larvae in my colony. what is it?

[arielgasca420]

I have had my dubia blaptica roach colony since august 2012. I just recently noticed this larvae pod. I have not noticed any new critters besides the roaches. This confuses me since roach give live birth. can anyone identify it for me?
I did recently buy some D. blaptica from a local home breeder. maybe something else was in the container? possibly another type of roach?
P.s.- I have not noticed any flies.

[Eric Walker]

Im not exactly sure what it is but it looks like some sort of fly larvae to me. Two other things. One, the specie of roach you have is blaptica dubia. dubia is the specie not the genus. And second there are roaches that lay egg cases and don't give live birth. Blatta lateralis ( Turkish reds ) are one of them. They lay tiny bean shaped red cases.

[JeffreH]

At a glance, it looked kind of like a dipteran pupation chamber or something to that nature to me as well... But it seems to have individual chambers that might suggest an oothecae.

Blaptica dubia do produce oothecae, they are just internally incubated and rapidly dry out in the external environment. If a female is very stressed or spooked, she can potentially abort her oothecae. Don't mean to be redundant with what you were saying Eric, just wanted to clarify that a bit further. B. dubia produce litters of live offspring purely because their ooths are retained and do not become heavily scleritized like you see in some other species.

[flybyferns]

At a glance, it looked kind of like a dipteran pupation chamber or something to that nature to me as well... But it seems to have individual chambers that might suggest an oothecae.

Blaptica dubia do produce oothecae, they are just internally incubated and rapidly dry out in the external environment. If a female is very stressed or spooked, she can potentially abort her oothecae. Don't mean to be redundant with what you were saying Eric, just wanted to clarify that a bit further. B. dubia produce litters of live offspring purely because their ooths are retained and do not become heavily scleritized like you see in some other species.

Thanks Jeff,
You're like
"Ace Lightning" ( he's a superhero, in case you didn't know)

[Eric Walker]

Good info Jeff. Didn't know they could do that myself.

[arielgasca420]

Im not exactly sure what it is but it looks like some sort of fly larvae to me. Two other things. One, the specie of roach you have is blaptica dubia. dubia is the specie not the genus. And second there are roaches that lay egg cases and don't give live birth. Blatta lateralis ( Turkish reds ) are one of them. They lay tiny bean shaped red cases.

There are no B. lateralis
There are no flies
I will have to go with Jeff's statement about the roaches being stressed and aborting and oothecae. I found others that are dried out and empty
I will have to keep an eye on this because the larvae are still alive and moving.
Thanks

[badkelpie]

Yeah, that's totally what it is, an aborted ootheca. Keep it warm and kinda moist, might hatch.