Lucanus elaphus
- Thread starter Goliathus
- Start date
I think I remember Mr Kim mentioning he has bred L elaphus without logs. Sorry, can't remember his exact user name. I generally put a log with the substrate but there are a few times I have not but I still got eggs. It wasn't many, maybe 10 or so but this was from wild caught females and sometimes I get that amount with logs as well. So to be honest, I have not done enough side by side comparisons to know for sure. Some breeders swear by them and others like Mr Kim feel you don't need them. Others feel you don't get as many eggs. If I were to guess, I would say maybe you would get less? These experiments are so difficult because it's never quite the same even under the same circumstances. However, you being a very experienced breeder, you know what I mean.
I have read some people stating that they lay down rotting logs within a flake soil substrate and the Lucanus cervus or elaphus will lay in the flake soil near the rotting logs. I do not speak from experience, but I imagine the rotting logs help increase your success, but is not a requirement. There is a similar controversy with many species within the Dorcus genus, many people state that flake soil is all you need, but many also say that the same species requires rotting logs. I highly doubt Lucanus elaphus is super super picky like Allotopus or Mesotopus.
Goliathus
Pachnoda
I'm not actually working with elaphus at the moment, but the next time I do, maybe I'll skip using logs in a couple of breeding set-ups to see if I get similar results as with logs. My results in getting elaphus to lay eggs have been very mixed. When I did get larvae, I got tons of them. In other attempts, no eggs were laid at all.
That would be an interesting experiment. Hopefully you can share your experience so that the hobby can rely more on captive bred specimens of L elaphus because right now almost all of them in the hobby are wild caught. We surely don't want to contribute to the decline of the species to levels like L cervus
Goliathus
Pachnoda
The decline of L. cervus is due to habitat loss, not collecting. Compared to centuries ago, there's very little broadleaf deciduous forest still left in Europe and the UK.
But yes - captive breeding is preferable, for various reasons.
Yes, that is correct. I am mostly just saying that we should not contribute even a little to the potential decline of a species if we do not need to. The hobby already has a bad reputation in many countries, due to illegal collection and illegal release... we need not to do this.