Porcellio Duboscqui Troglophila Isopods

The cave part of this animal's name is earned, which is not something we can say about every isopod sold with a cave story attached. Vandel named the troglophila form in 1951 from caves of the eastern Pyrenees and the Corbieres, all on the French side: the Grotte de Lapradelle in the Aude, and the Grotte des Voleurs at Caudies-de-Fenouillet, the Cova Bastera at Villefranche-de-Conflent, Las Balmes at Corsavy and the Grotte de Can Pey at Montferrer in the Pyrenees-Orientales. Later records filed under the form come from caves in Spanish Catalonia, among them the Avenc del Davi and the Cova del Manel. The ordinary form of the species, by contrast, turns up in perfectly unremarkable places - Argeles-sur-Mer, Collioure, Pamplona. The cave association attaches to this form specifically, and it is documented rather than assumed.

What it is not is an obligate cave animal. In biospeleology a troglophile is a species that can complete its life cycle underground while also living outside it. Vandel called this form troglophile and noted that most animals are paler than the typical form, usually with a light band round the body, but nothing published describes it as eyeless or confined to caves. It is a woodlouse comfortable in the dark, not a cave specialist.

The name

Porcellio duboscqui Paulian de Felice, 1941, described from Banyuls-sur-Mer on the French side of the eastern Pyrenees. It first appeared as a subspecies of P. lugubris and was later raised, and because the genus never changed, the authority takes no brackets. The word troglophila comes from Vandel's 1951 monograph on Porcellio, where he set it out as a forme of the species beside a smaller forme catalaunica. Serra's 2021 catalogue of Catalan woodlice lists it as a subspecies, but the current world checklist recognises no subspecies here at all. We keep the trade name because it is what the animal is sold as across Europe, though it is a form name with no standing and not a subspecies.

The range is restricted: the eastern Pyrenees on both slopes and Andorra, with outliers running west into Navarre and Aragon and east into the Catalan massifs at Montserrat. It is more French than Spanish by a wide margin, whatever the German listings say.

It is not, however, a scarce animal in the trade. A 2025 study of woodlice moving through the Spanish market picked it up as a regularly listed native species, and not as one of the labels used to move undescribed animals under a commoner name.

Conditions on our shelf

Warm and dry, with real airflow. 22 to 26°C, humidity around 45 to 55%, one fifth of the floor kept permanently damp while the rest stays untouched. Dry does not mean bone dry - there must always be moisture they can reach. That may look counterintuitive for a cave-associated animal. These are our shelf settings.

Substrate 5cm or so, topped with limestone chippings and flat stone stacked in layers. They want hard surfaces to sit against and vertical faces to climb, and that habit is the one thing which does read across from the caves. Leaf litter, white-rotted hardwood and permanent calcium. Protein about weekly. Like the other Spanish and French Porcellio they take it keenly.

No conglobation. Porcellio do not roll, and a large one under threat will run for the nearest gap instead.

Vandel's 1951 key gives the troglophila form a large size, up to 21mm, against 15mm or less for the catalaunica form, and uses that difference to tell the two apart; he adds that 21mm is also the maximum of the typical form. Sizes quoted around the trade run from 22mm up to 28mm, above anything in print, so treat those higher figures as an ambition and not a promise.

Every pot goes out with 20% more animals in it than your order states. They travel on damp moss in a vented tub, wrapped inside a two-ply box, sent out between Monday and Thursday by Royal Mail, on Next Day or Tracked 24 as you choose, and covered by our guarantee that they arrive alive.