{"id":3559,"date":"2017-01-01T11:01:39","date_gmt":"2017-01-01T19:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/?p=3559"},"modified":"2017-01-01T11:07:46","modified_gmt":"2017-01-01T19:07:46","slug":"january-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/?p=3559","title":{"rendered":"January 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><strong>2017 January 1<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/strong>Jeremy Tatum writes:&nbsp; It is a long time since I have seen a firebrat in my suite, but one turned up this morning.&nbsp; There is a problem.&nbsp; Is this the Common Firebrat  <em>Thermobia domestica, <\/em>or the Grey Firebrat <em>Ctenolepisma longicaudata<\/em>?&nbsp; I showed both species in the 2014 November 1 posting.&nbsp; Typically  <em>C. longicaudata<\/em> is uniformly grey, whereas <em>T. domestica <\/em>is very well marked.&nbsp; The specimen shown below looked uniformly grey at a casual glance with the unaided eye, but the photograph shows some patterning.&nbsp; It seems to be not sufficiently   uniformly grey for <em>&nbsp;<\/em><em>C. longicaudata<\/em>, but not well enough marked for  <em>T. domestica<\/em>.&nbsp; One needs some structural feature apart from colour to distinguish between the two.&nbsp; I suspect the following criterion might work:&nbsp; Abdomen shorter than thorax =&nbsp;  <em>T. domestica<\/em>.&nbsp; Abdomen longer than thorax = <em>C. longicaudata<\/em>.&nbsp; If that is a reliable criterion, then I&#8217;d call the specimen below  <em>C. longicaudata<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp; Another small problem is that <em>C. longicaudata<\/em> is often called the &#8220;Grey Silverfish&#8221; &#8211; although it is much more similar in appearance to the Common Firebrat than to a Silverfish.&nbsp; Both of the firebrats like warm places.&nbsp; The Silverfish  <em>Lepisma saccharina<\/em> likes cool places, and is easily distinguished from the firebrat by its short cerci.&nbsp; I have never seen a Silverfish in my apartment building.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" originalheight=\"800\" originalwidth=\"1200\" name=\"\" title=\"Ctenolepisma.JPG\" height=\"342.93333333333334\" width=\"514.4\" src=\"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Ctenolepisma.jpg\">  <\/p>\n<p>  <img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 5px;\" class=\"\" alt=\"\" src=\"file:\/\/\/F:\/DOCUME%7E1\/tatum\/LOCALS%7E1\/Temp\/msohtml1\/01\/clip_image002.jpg\">  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Grey Firebrat <em>Ctenolepisma longicaudata <\/em>(Thy.: Lepismatidae))&nbsp;&nbsp; Jeremy Tatum<\/p>\n<p>  <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2017 January 1 &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; Jeremy Tatum writes:&nbsp; It is a long time since I have seen a firebrat in my suite, but one turned up this morning.&nbsp; There is a problem.&nbsp; Is this the Common Firebrat Thermobia domestica, or the Grey Firebrat Ctenolepisma longicaudata?&nbsp; I showed both species in the 2014 November 1 posting.&nbsp; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-invertebrate-alert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}