Filippinodillo sp. 'Giant Bumblebee' Isopods (Filipino Giant)

There are two Bumblebee isopods in the hobby and they are not related. The famous one is a Thai Cubaris, small and banded in clean honey and black. This is the other one: a Philippine roller from a genus almost nobody has studied, and a considerably larger animal. If you came here looking for the striped Thai species, that link is the one you want.

What it actually is

The genus is Filippinodillo, erected by Schmalfuss in 1987, in the family Armadillidae. Two Ps, one L, and the trade spells it every other way. Four species have been formally described, one of them Australian rather than Philippine, and 'Giant Bumblebee' is none of the four. Nobody has published a description of this animal, so it goes out as Filippinodillo sp. with the abbreviation carrying the uncertainty. You will occasionally see it offered as a Cubaris instead, which tells you how settled the identification is.

Being Armadillidae, it shuts into a ball when startled, and that is the one behavioural fact here backed by more than shop copy. The 'Giant' in the name is doing a job: it separates this animal from the small Thai Bumblebee rather than making a claim about the genus, where several of the Philippine morphs are larger again.

What ours look like

This describes our own stock, because no published description of this animal exists. The body carries two tones rather than clean bands: a pale cream front running back over the head and the first segments, and a dusky brown rear mottled and speckled with the same cream across each segment. Against dark leaf litter the front end reads almost white. The markings vary between individuals, as they do across this whole group, so treat the photographs as representative rather than a specification.

Adults here run 20 to 25mm. That figure is ours, from our own animals, which is worth saying because the reported range across the Philippine morphs is much looser, from about 20mm to past 30mm, and nobody has measured a series of any of them.

Conditions

Warm, 22 to 27°C, with humidity around 60 to 80% built as a gradient rather than held at a number. Keep the greater part of the substrate damp, leave a drier corner, and let the animals choose.

The requirement worth taking seriously across this whole Philippine group is airflow. Keepers on two continents describe them as sensitive to stagnant conditions, and a humid box with nowhere for the air to go is how they are lost. Vent it and mean it: mesh set into two opposing sides of the lid does the job. Below that, give a deep living substrate built on leaf mould and forest soil with sphagnum worked through it, never coco coir, since this is an animal that eats what it walks on. Cap that with hardwood litter and decaying white-rotted wood, stand cork bark across it, and keep calcium in permanently, because a large roller wants it to hand at every moult.

Feeding is undemanding. The litter and the wood carry most of it, with vegetables in small amounts and a modest protein feed once or twice a week. Our substrate guide covers a mix that suits them.

Who it suits

Intermediate, and patient. It is not a fragile animal, but like the rest of the genus it grows slowly and builds slowly, so it rewards somebody who has already run a tropical colony through a year and is not expecting numbers in a hurry. It is not a first isopod.

If the genus appeals, Leopard Bee is the lemon-yellow one with dark leopard blotching, a genuinely different look from this one, while Nakar and Giant Banahoa are the marbled browns. The rest sit under our Filipino isopods. Whether any of them are the same species under different trade names is not something anybody has established, and we would not assume it either way.

Ours are captive-bred. Colonies travel on damp sphagnum in a ventilated tub inside a double-walled box, posted Monday to Thursday so nothing sits in the network over a weekend, by tracked Royal Mail next day before 1pm. A 20% overcount goes in as standard and live arrival is guaranteed. Setup kit is in our accessories range.