314 Phylum Ar thro poda 



Only occasionally are these bugs cannibalistic. This may happen 

 when no other food is available. Sometimes when hard pressed for food 

 both young and adults have been observed to feed upon the eggs that 

 were found in the water. They like small notonectids, corixids, small 

 carabids, freshwater shrimps, and such. They refused small minnows, 

 however. It is not uncommon to see three feeding quietly on one shrimp 

 or two feeding on one small beetle. In the rearing work all sorts of 

 insects were used as food, such as grasshoppers; stink-bugs; various 

 species of beetles including blister beetles, flies, mealworms, and small 

 snout beetles; membracids; and mosquito larvae, of which they are 

 very fond. It was a problem to procure food for these insects during 

 the winter, as they were kept in a warm room and were more or less 

 active. Many times when the bugs were hungry and no insect food was 

 available they were fed on small bits of raw beef. 



Adults readily mated and laid eggs in captivity. Curicta adults were 

 kept over the winter and the following summer a number of these insects 

 laid eggs from which young were again reared. 



M. E. D. 

 References 

 For the feeding of Nepa, Ranatra, and Curicta see p. 310. 



Family gelastocoridae 



GELASTOCORIS OCULATUS* 



TALL stenders, or staining jars, of glass, about the size of jelly 

 glasses, were used as containers. In each of these was placed an 

 inch of sand or soil that had been sterilized by heat. The paired adults 

 were confined in low stenders of various sizes, and the sand searched 

 every day for eggs. The young were isolated in the tall stenders as soon 

 as they hatched, for they are cannibalistically inclined. The sand was 

 moistened each day, and the jars were covered with ground glass covers. 



The insects were fed houseflies, oscinid flies, cicadellids, and many 

 other small insects taken in sweeping the grass. Each day the dead car- 

 casses were cleaned out of the rearing jars and freshly killed insects in- 

 serted. Nymphs and adults of Gelastocoris pounce upon their prey, 

 which appears to consist of almost any sort of insect they can capture, 

 from a grouse locust to a lacebug. 



Mortality in captivity was very high and indicates that some essential 

 factor of their natural habitat was lacking. Mortality was greatest in 



♦Abstracted from an article in Kan. Univ. Sri. Bull. 14:145, 1922, by H. B. 

 Hungerford, University of Kansas. 



