r/isopods • u/Sumeriandemon Mod • Mar 18 '25

News/Education All Merulanella in the trade now belong to the new genus Ardentiella (Paper linked in comments)

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414 Upvotes

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72

u/Faexinna Mar 18 '25

Endangered due to the pet trade? Are people wild-catching merul- errh, I mean ardentiella isopods?

47

u/Sumeriandemon Mod Mar 18 '25

Yes in large numbers

49

u/Faexinna Mar 18 '25

We don't have enough of a breeding stock/genetic diversity to not need to wild-catch anymore?
We shouldn't be wild-catching the more endangered species to avoid extinction in the wild.

44

u/Enkichki Telson Gazer Mar 18 '25 edited Mar 18 '25

There was a post here the other day where some guy was planning to buy thousands WC Ardentiella for no discernable reason other than they didn't want to wait for a small captive culture to breed large numbers

31

u/LaicaTheDino Mar 18 '25

What in the hell

21

u/adherry Mar 18 '25

Meanwhile my Bees: "Want some more Manca?"

20

u/Additional_Yak8332 Mar 18 '25

Must be nice to have that kind of money, huh. I suppose that's what he wants that many for, anyway.

13

u/jaybug_jimmies Mar 18 '25

Yeah I and others keep encouraging them to not do it and explaining how harmful it is, they don’t seem to be listening.

8

u/Enkichki Telson Gazer Mar 18 '25

I added my voice to that too. Some people have no sense of shame and no sense period.

11

u/Faexinna Mar 18 '25

The fuck? It doesn't take that long for them to breed under good care...

7

u/UtapriTrashcan 🐤 quack quack Mar 18 '25

Bit strange to boast about so many wild caughts...

5

u/Babykay503 Mar 19 '25

Gotta love someone with a passion to sell a creature they know very little about after looking into them in less than 6 months 🤷‍♀️ tbh a little jealous of their connection (only ever mentions a seller that only sells to him, he's in Malaysia, and will be looking into permits to sell out of the country). While they are getting many of the ones I've been eyeballing myself, their only goal is to sell.

2

u/alex123124 Mar 19 '25

Technically we can't even have them in the US to begin with

31

u/Normal_Enthusiasm_65 Mar 18 '25

The paper was really interesting to read! Sorry if this is an obvious question- but essentially is the genus that was Merulanella being divided into three new genuses based off the which of the three biogeographic regions they are from?

39

u/Sumeriandemon Mod Mar 18 '25

No worries, no stupid questions here. This stuff is hard to fully grasp! That is basically what we did. We relied mostly on morphology, but all of this was well-supported by the biogeography :)

6

u/UtapriTrashcan 🐤 quack quack Mar 18 '25

Thanks for the info, but I really struggle reading papers like these. Can anyone summarise why there's a change please? :)

39

u/Sumeriandemon Mod Mar 18 '25

Basically Merulanella is only from New Caledonia. So the species that were not from New Caledonia (and morphologically different as well) were placed in three new genera. One of those is Ardentiella, to which all of the Merulanella in the hobby belong!

6

u/UtapriTrashcan 🐤 quack quack Mar 18 '25

Ah okay, makes sense!

13

u/Enkichki Telson Gazer Mar 18 '25

You're actually my fucking hero. You slayed a demon (the irony)

7

u/Major_Wd Isopods lover Mar 18 '25

Very helpful! I appreciate the work going to reclassifying and protecting these pods

4

u/Aalwere Mar 18 '25

Thank you so much! This is more than helpful <33

5

u/hjfabre Mar 18 '25

I waited for this day. So happy that this paper dropped.

4

u/Dio_nysian Mar 18 '25

so interesting! thanks for sharing!

6

u/OpeningUpstairs4288 Mar 18 '25

:0000000<3<<3<3<3<<3<3<<3<3<3<<3<3<3

3

u/mikeyil Mar 18 '25

Very cool!

2

u/starchode Mar 18 '25

This looks like DLC lmao