Berastagi Bug Collecting!

 Hello again! Welcome to this post. I had just finished exploring a district in Northern Sumatra called "Berastagi" which is known for its beauty in nature and uhh.. Lots, lots, of spiders. Which is a great thing! 😁 

But spiders weren't the only thing in Berastagi though, there were a lot of other cool verts and inverts.

So now, let's go through all the highlights and things I collected. 😃

Just at the moment I arrived at the hotel I was going to stay in, I spotted a Uloborus walckanaerius mother with her slings.

You can see the mother below the egg sac.

When I was told there were a lot of spiders, they really meant it, lol 😆 

A few hours later, I went out to an urban area but still has a lot of greens, bushes, and trees.

I thought it may look as if not many bugs would choose to be here, but oh was I wrong.

Immediately, I spotted a couple of these really pretty locality of Bradybaena similaris. I have never seen this coloration before! I love the red banding on the shell. Truly stunning.

A few minutes of searching on trees would reveal a species of spider that was truly a delight to see.

They were these beautiful spiny orbweavers. In the total search I spotted four, and I don't know the exact species but I was truly stunned.

I also spotted a species of spider which I'm not so sure what it is, but some snails was trying to climb up the web. 

"This doesn't feel like soil.." 😆

I also spotted this little toad digging up a hole larger than my head below a tree

She really wants me to get away from her home haha

I mean.. I would too if some giant modern ape approached my house.. 😅

In this massive bamboo tree, I found a looooot of cool inverts.

In it..

We get into the thing that I mentioned before. Spiders!!

I am assuming these two are males of the same species of a female that I collected near the location.

Not sure what species of Argiope, I originally thought of argentata but it looks different.

I also spotted this really pretty cranefly (?) perching on a leaf in the bamboo tree.

I've also never seen a cranefly with these gorgeous patterns.

I think the species is Nephrotoma appendiculata, although I am not sure if this species is found in Indonesia.

I also collected these really cool Pycnoscelus indicus, I have always been finding a source to get these roaches. And I finally found some 😄

These guys were found in the substrate below the bamboo tree.

On a few branches in the bamboo tree, I found these Cerogria cf. klapperichi.

Finally more beetles to the collection :D

Another beetle found together with the klapperichis were some Phytoscaphus triangularis.

Iirc these are some leaf-feeding species of weevil.

Fast forward 2 hours, I went to a vegetable farm.

There were also a lot of bugs in there.

I caught two roaches, one indicus and one Blattella asahinai.

Blattella asahinai (possibly female)

Pycnoscelus indicus male

I also spotted a lot of these black Gryllus crickets.

They look slightly different than the one I keep as feeders. Pretty cool!

Nearby, I also spotted a few Parmarion martensi.

It's been quite a while since I last saw these guys.

It was getting dark, and there were a heck ton of mosquitoes at night. So I'm not taking any risks 😅

But at dawn, the view was absolutely beautiful.

But when I arrived back at the hotel, the strong winds managed to open the window a bit. I guess we didn't secure it that well 😅

But that lead to something pretty exciting, and not so exciting.

The not-so-exciting thing is that the two first indicus that I captured unfortunately died, but

Two, considerably sized spiders entered the hotel room, which both I decided to keep.

This is an unidentified species of Gnaphosidae, possibly Zelotes but not confirmed. So for now I guess we'll just call it "Gnaphosidae sp. Berastagi" or something

The other one is Cheiracanthium cf. punctorium. To be honest, it was kinda terrifying at first, but as a weirdo why not keep it.. right...?

The only terrifying thing about it is just those massive fangs to be honest

I'm sure it's a male, because of the bulbs on his pedipalps.

That's the end of that day.

The next morning, (the day I posted this) I went out again in search for another location that could potentially have inverts.

While searching, I found a pond filled with tadpoles. Not anything much, but I just want to show this

Continuing the search, I found this location.

I decided to look at the trees, as there might be some spiders or anything arboreal.

I didn't find any spiders, but I did find this pretty looking snail.

It was quite small.

Anyway, I decided to go deeper in since I couldn't find much. And oh was that a good decision..

I decided to look in this bush. There were fireflies, craneflies, house flies, but those weren't as interesting as what I found under it.

There were some unused pieces of cardboard and a lot of leaf litter and foliage, and that is a great hide for any small invertebrates.

Without wasting any time, I looked under it.

There were a lot of Burmoniscus isopods but the thing that caught my attention were the colony of Blattella asahinai that were living under it.

I caught 4 out of the dozens living there.

The good thing is, the adult that I caught was holding an ootheca! So I hope that I will have a lot of little asahinai soon 😁

I decided to go deeper after that.

I wanted to look here and further in, since it looked like the PERFECT bug home.

And a few pretty birds up in the trees as well :D

I found a heck ton of harvestmen, but I only managed to catch 3 as they weren't so easy to catch because the majority were juveniles or newborns.

But, out of all the small ones there was an oddity.

A beaauuuutiful adult!

This has got to be some Gagrellinae species, but it's not easy to identify since many are undescribed or not so known, so I might have to do deeper research. 

I captured two juveniles of what possibly could be the same species but I am not so sure.

Gagrellinae sp. juveniles 

I collected a stock of Oxidus gracilis to start a colony, I didn't really pay attention to how much I took in the collecting site, but when I got back to the hotel I realized I caught quite a lot.

But the more the merrier 😄

Oxidus gracilis colony

After I collected the millipedes, I was sifting around the leaf litter when I spotted a very odd and interesting looking roach, together with again a whole lot of gracilis 😂 they're everywhere in the site.

But I think it could be either a Blattidae or Ectobiidae, but it looks also like a mini B. orientalis, lol

And to finish this post, I collected a beautiful juvenile huntsman of the species I assume Heteropoda venatoria.

Stunning. My Heteropoda javana at home is actually getting old and won't live much longer so I guess this little one will be her replacement.

Anyway, thank you so much for taking your time to read this post. I hope you enjoyed reading and I'll see you in the next post.

Bye! 👋