Critters
Dwarf white isopod
Trichorhina tomentosa
Closed jar only
Tiny white isopods that live in the soil. The usual cleanup crew for small jars.
What the simulation uses
- Eats litter
- 0.002 mg/day each
- Dead leaves one animal shreds a day, turning them back into soil.
- Eats mould
- 0.004 mg/day each
- Mould one animal grazes a day, keeping fuzz and grey mould down.
- Colony at most
- 95,000 per m²
- How many the floor can feed when food is plentiful; less food, fewer.
- Starving loses
- 15 % a day
- How fast a colony thins when the jar cannot feed it.
- Eats
- decaying plant, leaf litter, frass, mould, fungi, animal waste
- Foods it lives on; the jar feeds it from whichever of these it has.
- Humidity
- 80 to 100 % RH
- Air moisture it needs.
- Temperature
- 21 to 29 °C
- Comfortable range; beyond it the colony suffers.
- Doubles in
- 45 days
- Time for the colony to double with plenty of food.
- Lives
- 547.5 days
- How long one animal lives.
Care
- Size
- 2 to 3 mm
- Moisture
- Moist
What kills it
- substrate drying
- temps below ~18 C (tropical species)
- waterlogged anoxic substrate
- lack of leaf litter
Description
It cannot roll into a ball, so it relies entirely on moist soil to avoid drying. The colony is all female and needs warmth above about 18 °C. Provide leaf litter and avoid soggy, airless soil.
Also called dwarf white, dwarf white woodlouse, Bathytropa thermophila.
Estimated, where sources were thin: clutch_or_offspring; maturity_days; generation_days; lifespan_days; temp_c.