Pallasii 'Corfu' Isopods (Armadillidium pallasii) for Sale UK

This animal carries four names, and the ones the taxonomists threw away are the ones that tell you what to look at. Armadillidium frontirostre and Armadillidium frontisignum are both junior synonyms of Armadillidium pallasii. One reads as forehead-beak and the other as front-marked, and both point at the same end of the animal.

The nose

There is a raised frontal plate above the face, a blunt shelf that stands proud when you look at the animal head-on. It is why part of the UK trade sells woodlice as the Rhino Horned Roller, usually still under the old name frontirostre. If you have seen that advertised somewhere, it is being sold under a synonym of this species. Whether every tub sold under that name holds the same animal is a separate question, and one we would not want to answer for anybody else.

Brandt published the accepted name in 1833, almost certainly for the naturalist Peter Simon Pallas, though he did not say so. Our stock came in labelled Corfu, which is where the trade name attached itself, and Corfu is a published locality for the species: Budde-Lund listed the island in 1885 and Schmalfuss records animals collected there in 1982. It is the southern end of the range rather than the middle of it. Of the occurrence records held for the species, the overwhelming majority are Croatian, then Italian, then Crimean, and Schmalfuss's 2011 revision runs the range along the east coast of Italy, down the Dalmatian coast and islands to Corfu, and round the Marmara and Black Sea coasts. Adriatic to Black Sea is the accurate description, with Corfu at its southern tip. Our Armadillidium pallasii care guide sets out the whole record.

Colour and size

The unmorphed animal is grey: lead-grey to blackish grey in the published descriptions. Ours come in a range of shades, from a pale lilac-grey to a darker grey, with a scatter of paler spots that shows best on a clean substrate under decent light. It is a big Armadillidium. Schmalfuss's 2011 revision of the Ionian species gives a maximum of 21.5mm, the trade quotes up to about 24mm with nothing behind it, and 20mm is the top of Budde-Lund's 1885 range. The bright orange line we keep is a separate animal to look at and has its own page; if that is the look you are after, start there.

Keeping them

Build for a Mediterranean species, because that is what it is. Every humidity percentage you will see quoted for this animal, ours included, is trade guesswork with no published figure behind it, so work with a gradient instead of a number: one damp end, most of the floor drier, and enough ventilation that the surface is never sitting wet. Give it 5 to 8cm of substrate, leaf litter across the surface, and cork bark and flat stone to sit under. 18 to 26°C, so room temperature is fine in a British house and it wants no supplementary heat at all.

It conglobates fully and readily, which is half of why anyone keeps a large pill woodlouse. Calcium has to be permanently available, both worked through the substrate and loose on the surface to graze on, because an animal this size gets through a lot of it. Feed protein more often than you would for a small species. Past that it is undemanding, breeds steadily once settled, and keeps producing all year in a warm room.

A sensible first large Armadillidium, and a good one to put in front of somebody who thinks pill woodlice are all grey and 8mm long. If you want something in the same size class with a very different silhouette, the horned hauseni is worth a look, and the rest of the genus is in Armadillidium isopods.

Captive-bred. Orders leave here between Monday and Thursday in a ventilated pot with moss beneath the animals, boxed inside a double skin of card, and Royal Mail deliver the next working day before lunchtime. Counts are deliberately generous and never exact. The live arrival guarantee covers every order.