5.14.2024 - Family Traits

I explored another area of the yard today and found a really high concentration of the Neons, the high yellows with white or yellow patterns. They may not be as rare as I thought they were. Since isopods don't migrate, it seems like certain morphs pop up in family lines which stay in one place and breed themselves out without much interference, to the point where I am beginning to map the yard by which morph appears most often in what part of the yard. Whatever interbreeding of local traits I ever could've wanted to do was clearly already done by nature over the many generations they've lived on this patch of land, long before anyone started paying attention. In that way, I'm really doing more of a reverse logic puzzle to work out how some of these crazy color / pattern combos came to be.

And in the same way that when you learn a new word, you start hearing it everywhere, I am now finding a LOT of peach a. nasatum. Now that I know what I'm looking for, there are quite a few, especially in the middle part of the yard between the water oak and sweetgum trees, where I just found all the neons. If there's any interest, I might consider raising those as well. But my plate is plenty full with just a. vulgare!