Mysterious T Die-off - Any Thoughts Appreciated!

I take care of several T's in my university's insectary and recently there has been a pretty major die off. Two G. rosea, one B. boehmi, and one A. chalcodes. I've removed all dead T's and have replaced the substrate of all the living T's every time one dies. I have no idea why they are still dying off because most have not been adults and I've been keeping them in standard T set ups. All T's were eating normally before dying. One thing I noticed with the boehmi was that it would curl its legs underneath it like it was going into a death curl, but when I touched the enclosure or disturbed it in any way, it would pop right back up like normal.

I have checked for nematodes and haven't seen any, so that can be checked off I think. Dehydration hasn't been an issue and all T's have died with full abdomens. The chalcodes had what looked like a scab above the spinnerets, but besides that all T's looked healthy and didn't have any marks. Could phorids still be a possibility?

Any thoughts would be much appreciated, especially since we have our biggest outreach event of the year coming up at the end of February and need a bunch of T's!

Does the university have a regular pest control company? Did they get sprayed?

No spraying that I know of. Our insectary is located in the entomology building, so spraying would probably affect the colonies the labs are keeping for experiments. I can ask around tomorrow though. There is definitely a roach problem in the building, but there's a roach problem in almost every building on campus. The roaches I see most frequently in the insectary are brown banded roaches, which would be too small to attract the T's attention for the most part. Adults are large enough and may be able to squeeze in, but there's no food in there for them, so I can't really see them going in there when our lubber colony always has some sort of food and the pet roach species we keep get fed and watered twice a week. I wonder if the pest control company could be using a pesticide that the roaches ingest that then kills them?

pannaking22 said:

No spraying that I know of. Our insectary is located in the entomology building, so spraying would probably affect the colonies the labs are keeping for experiments. I can ask around tomorrow though. There is definitely a roach problem in the building, but there's a roach problem in almost every building on campus. The roaches I see most frequently in the insectary are brown banded roaches, which would be too small to attract the T's attention for the most part. Adults are large enough and may be able to squeeze in, but there's no food in there for them, so I can't really see them going in there when our lubber colony always has some sort of food and the pet roach species we keep get fed and watered twice a week. I wonder if the pest control company could be using a pesticide that the roaches ingest that then kills them?

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Valid possibility, roaches can travel rather far or hitch hike from building to building

I agree that it could be a pesticide roaches ingested. You would probably see signs of phorid larvae in the Ts mouth and other places. Have any other insects died? You could try and use process of elimination to find the reason any other deaths.

How many do you keep, and how many have died? Since the midwest has been unusually cold, what kind of temperature do they see during the day? Is there a possibility of the heat got turned off for a good length of time, during the chirstmas/new year break?

+1 to the pesticide/wild vector hypothesis. Find out who orders maintenance around campus and if they do their own pest control or if they hire an outside party. If it's not pesticide then the runner up IMO would be an insane roach/invertebrate parasite...since there have been so many affected at once.
Are they HANDLED at all by ANYONE?
A high temp can kill a sling as well and leave it a beautiful corpse....a good point that eleportoed mentioned. A temperature probe that graphs temperature vs time should be easy to find in your lab, put it to work and maybe you can find that smoking gun....or the kid/professor that didn't think to wash his/her hands after petting fluffy.
THINK!! This is the kind of stuff that AB is for. Long live thread.

We've had plenty of lubbers (Romalea microptera) die off, but that could also be because they are extremely inbred. Or it could be because the roaches walked through something toxic and walked on their food. Hard to say, but it could be a possibility. They've gone for about 15 years and I have no idea if any new gene lines were added in that time because they were bred specifically for size, so any sort of disease would run through them like wildfire.

Mouths and book lungs all looked normal. The only thing out of the ordinary was the scab on the chalcodes.

There were 16 T's and 4 of them have died. 2/4 G. rosea, 1/1 B. boehmi, 1/1 A. chalcodes, and 1/1 A. anax (sorry, I forgot to mention A. anax earlier since he was really small and mean and never shown for outreach or anything like that). None were adults, though the two roseas and the chalcodes were both close (within 1-2 molts). Despite the holidays, the temps and everything would not have changed. There are always maintenance and grad students around, so the building itself is always on in some way, shape, or form. The labs are really the only things that are open and shut, but that's under the control of the people in them. The insectary stays at approximately the same temp throughout the day and nothing gets changed. The lighting is all on a timer too. The reason I'm leaning away from extended periods of low temps is that R. microptera is extremely sensitive to high and low temps, so we would have likely had 100% mortality if there was a huge temp swing.

In terms of people going in, it's an open room that anyone can access. Very few people know of the room though, so not a lot of people go in. Basically, it's just entomology grad students and faculty that know where the room is and will access it. Some people even run experiments in there (non-pesticide of course) and all of their live stock looked fine. I have been pushing for the door to only be opened by someone with a key and I'm going to push that even harder during our meeting next week. There was a course during the fall that had lots of students going in and out throughout the day, which I thought could have been part of the problem, but the class ended well over a month ago and no T's died until yesterday.

Handling is minimal. I did think during the fall some of the grad students may have handled the roseas, but that seems unlikely because we have a large female rosea that is much more docile and is in general a very good T. The other roseas were skittish and liked to kick hairs. The A. chalcodes wouldn't have been handled because she would threat display every time her enclosure was opened and the B. boehmi is a B. boehmi, so no one wanted to really go near it. I do know of one student who would have likely tried to handle the roseas, but she said she didn't and they looked healthy as could be when they died.

Maybe a timeline would help? If nothing else, it gives the thread more info that could be useful to keepers later on. Dates marked with ~ are within two days

~12 Oct 2014 - G. rosea dies. Body seems unmarked. No sign of dehydration.
~10 Nov 2014 - G. rosea dies. Abdomen was somewhat shriveled when I obtained the specimen, but that was because I had been at a conference and didn't get it until about 5 days later. I know the date because another grad student who didn't go to the conference but normally takes care of the inverts in the insectary told me.
~18 Nov 2014 - A. anax dies. It was flipped over when I first noticed it, so I thought it was going to molt. It had been doing the "death curl" earlier on in the week, but responded normally when watered or disturbed in general. Was placed in ICU briefly while "death curling", but removed the next day after it had flipped the water dish, frassed in it, and proceeded to shred the paper towels.
~12 Jan 2015 - B. boehmi and A. chalcodes die. Care was not done by me over the holidays and I just returned on 13 Jan. Other general caretaker took care of inverts while I was gone and reported no problems. Person who cares for the lubbers went in and saw the dead T's and texted me on 12 Jan. Only the A. chalcodes was in a death curl. The B. boehmi was stretched out. Both abdomens were somewhat shriveled, but not terribly so. Limbs were still very easy to move, so deaths were likely very recent. Scab or scar was noticed on abdomen of A. chalcodes when placed under microscope. This may just be an anomaly though, as all other T's were placed under a scope and no other scabbing/scarring was found. B. boehmi acted similar to the A. anax.

I think that's all I've got. I'll poke around in the morning and see if anything turns up. I'll also add more info to this if I can think of anything.

It kinda sounds like an awful coincidence. Sounds like the chalcodes had an injury, one rosea was dehydrated and the anax was having a difficult molt. Still worth looking into though just to make sure it wasn't a pesticide issue. Are the Ts under lights?

It kind of does, but the spacing of the deaths is what bothers me, along with the fact that none of the T's seemed to really be ailing in any way (other than a couple doing the weird fake death curls). The anax didn't lay down any sort of molting mat and liked to lean up against the walls, so I wondered if it had been up against the wall and fell over backwards before dying. It also didn't even pop off the prosoma like molting was about to begin. It was also on the thin side, but T's molt when they want, so I wouldn't have been too terribly surprised if it decided to molt. I made sure to get everyone's substrate very wet before leaving for my conference and they've been without water for two weeks before without any issues, so I think the rosea may have had a shriveled abdomen because it had just been sitting in the enclosure for a few days after dying.

In terms of lighting, the closest light is an infrared heat lamp for the lubbers that is 5 feet away and 2 feet higher than the highest T enclosure. The T closest to the light has been there for years and hasn't had any problems with the lamp. In fact, she's the largest and healthiest T we have.

My department head isn't in today and none of the maintenance people I've come across know if there has been pesticide application. I sent the head an email though to see if she knows anything about it, along with the head of the animal biology department.

IHeartTs said:

Sounds like the chalcodes had an injury, one rosea was dehydrated and the anax was having a difficult molt.

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A paradox...!

Hmm.. this sounds like a real mystery to me, sounds like there can be many contributing factors, but perhaps some foul play is involved? :? :/ I'd say you purchase some kind camera, maybe a gopro and have the area monitored, if any more Ts die we can be sure it was natural causes. I'm quite surprised to hear those genus died, from what I always understood they were the more "tougher" kind of T's, able to withstand temperature changes opposed to arboreals and old world, etc. Well, I hope you're able to find a conclusion to this mystery, please keep us informed. Good Luck

From the time span that you showed, I think it may be just a series of bad luck. Some of my slings and juvies died without any warnings on occasions. If it was some kind of bugs, it would have spread more quickly and probably would affect the whole collection. The only thing that I can suggest is to keep them well hydrated and warm.

It is odd that the "tougher" T's have gone down first, as opposed to the Avicularia sp. we have that is quite healthy and hasn't had any problems. I'll keep hunting around for info and go over all the T's with a microscope again just to be sure I'm not missing anything.

At this point, I'm hoping it's just really bad luck. I've had a few T's die on me for no reason before, but they have typically been very young, while all of these have been subadults. I'll be sure to check on everyone daily now (instead of every other day like before) and let you all know if I notice anything or if anything new happens.

Thanks everyone!

That's exactly what I'm saying! Do you guys have a maintenance crew that goes in the room and uses chemicals to clean the area and maybe some of the cleaning chemicals landed in the enclosures?

If maintenance crews were going through and spraying chemicals, it wouldn't be in the insectary. We've been trying for 2 years now to get them to come in and change a fluorescent light and they still haven't done it. The insectary ranks pretty low on their to do list, so not much happens in there. The most I can think of is that they could have placed some sort of non-spray contact insecticide somewhere in the building and the roaches traveled to the insectary after coming in contact with it.

Even though the T deaths are mysterious, it is totally possible that is was a complete coincidence. Roaches carrying insecticide is also possible, but I think some kind of direct contact would be required. I'm assuming the pest roaches aren't fed to the spiders, which may be the case with some students. I go to school with a girl who has a G rosea and feeds it pests found around the house......

If another one dies soon mysteriously I would start to be VERY concerned.

Best of luck to you!

good advice! well, said.

Thanks for the thoughts, problemchildx. Pest species are not fed to the T's and the main pest species we have is the brown banded roach, which would likely be too small even as adults to attract the T's attention.

I have officially hit the very concerned point then...my B. smithi is starting to show the same symptoms the B. boehmi did... I'll document everything as best I can and we'll see what happens. I have it in an ICU now and it is a bit warmer in mine than it is the insectary.

This confirms that the insectary is the problem source. Some of the T's have travelled around for outreach and I had wondered if maybe they had come in contact with an insecticide while at local schools. I basically threw that thought out when others that hadn't traveled died as well. My smithi was in the insectary while I was on break for ~2 weeks because it was warmer there than it would be in my apartment (my landlord turned down the heat in a neighbor's apartment while he was gone over Thanksgiving and froze many of his herps because he doesn't want to have to pay more for heat when no one is there, though the tenants are the ones who pay for heat, electric, etc.).

I quarantined my T's to an extent when I brought them back a couple days ago just in case. They are in a separate room at the other end of the apartment. They were also kept well separate of the T's in the insectary. I may take them back and put them in my office until this blows over. Would they be fine in a dark room with no light unless I'm there?

Update!

No other T's have died off or are showing symptoms of anything. An unknown OW T we have had been looking a little dehydrated, but that's been it and after some extra substrate soaking looks like normal again.

All my T's that were in the insectary are still in quarantine, but all look normal and have been eating (even my B. smithi, who I took out of the ICU a couple days after he started showing symptoms). I will leave my T's in quarantine for a few more days and continue to closely monitor the T's in the insectary and update this thread occasionally if anything happens.