Chicobolus

Description of current Chicobolus spinigerus stocks with locality information.

“Miami” – These start out as solid gray with brown/purple shade on the back. The gray background can have blue/green hue to it. Subadults are often shiny black with thin gray banding, but occasionally dark purple individuals will pop up. Legs are usually purple or dark black in color similar to their body color.

“BPK" or "Big Pine Key” – These are nearly identical to “Miami” stock but juveniles are often lighter colored and usually develop deeper purple hue to them. However, you’ll occasionally get specimens that’ll look identical to “Miami” stock. Therefore, to retain the purity of this stock it is important to label them carefully.

"Archbold" or "Archbold Rainbow" – Juveniles start out as solid greenish gray with a purple shade on the back. Purple color on the back can change from purple to brown sometimes as specimens age. Wild caught specimens showed extremely high variation in their coloration but all turned into standard ivory millipede coloration. In captivity juveniles don’t seem to throw much variation, which makes one speculate if environmental factor contributes to the color variation in this stock. Adults have ivory colored legs.

“Newberry” – I have some wild caught specimens that come in dark form and light form. Dark form has reduced banding while the light form has white banding that even cover part of their head. I have isolated the two forms in a hope that they are heritable trait. When they were collected as small juveniles all specimens exhibited white cream color on their banding but as they aged the white turned into slightly orange color. Legs of this stock are dark purple/black.

“Appalachicola” – I have yet to breed this stock but about 90% of the individuals I observed in the wild had fiery orange banding with a black background color. A few individuals had beige colored banding and some of the orange individuals molted to a beige color, taking several weeks to turn orange again. One trait that seems to be fixed in this stock is they all have deep red color on their dorsal part.

“Miccosukee” – This is a highly variable stock with adults ranging from purple to brown with white or orange banding. Interestingly this stock grows significantly smaller than all the other stock I have (adults are around 2”). Juveniles can be gray, purple, brown and so on.

It should be noted that most of these stock exhibit variations that can overlap with other locality. Therefore, it is important to label the stock with its locality info and avoid mixing them with other stocks that have unclear origin.

Chicobolus seems to appreciate supplemental foods to a much greater degree than many other spirobolids. They love eating fresh vegetables such as zucchini, squash, pumpkin, lettuce, etc. They’ll also eat dog food readily and this seems to have no ill effect on their health. In fact, they grow much faster if you mix dog food in their diet as opposed to just throwing woods and vegetables at them. In the wild I’ve seen them climb up palmettos to eat their flowers, and I’ve also found one munching on lichen on a tree limb, suggesting that these will actively seek out plant materials in the wild to eat and not just settle for rotting wood.

Species image compliments of Alan Jeon. "Archbold" locale top, "Miami" locale bottom (4).