Trachelipus Isopods For Sale

Trachelipus are temperate Eurasian woodlice with a ridged, armoured look, and the Trilobite isopod is the best known of them. The lines here span the genus's range, from the Carpathians and the Balkans to the Caucasus and Crete, and go out Monday to Thursday with the live arrival guarantee and a 20% overcount.

They are hardy, cool-running animals that suit a normally heated room far better than a tropical setup.

What they are

Trachelipus Budde-Lund, 1908 belongs to the family Trachelipodidae, separate from both Porcellio and Armadillidium. They are clingers rather than rollers: they can't roll into a ball, and they hold tight to bark and stone instead. Schmidt's 1997 revision recognised fifteen European species and more have been described since, among them the Cretan T. cavaticus; Britain has one of its own, T. rathkii.

• Trilobite (T. trilobatus): ridged segments that give it the look of a fossil trilobite, and the one most keepers come to the genus for.
• T. caucasius from the Caucasus, T. mostarensis, named after Mostar in Herzegovina, and T. difficilis, a mountain species of the Carpathians.
• T. ratzeburgii, a Central European species, and T. cavaticus, in a line that came from Crete.

Care

Keep them cool to moderate, with a moisture gradient and a drier end, good ventilation, plenty of leaf litter and decaying wood, and a calcium source. No published study gives a temperature or humidity range for any Trachelipus, so every figure you will see, including the ones on my listings, is keeper practice, and my listings give ranges between about 15 and 26°C depending on the species. My Trachelipus care guide covers the genus in full.

If you like the temperate European isopods, the Armadillidium and Porcellio pages have more of them.