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. 2024 Jul 26;14(15):2176.
doi: 10.3390/ani14152176.

Influence of Incubation Temperature and Relative Humidity on the Egg Hatchability Pattern of Two-Spotted (Gryllus bimaculatus) and House (Acheta domesticus) Crickets

Jamlong Mitchaothai  1 , Rachakris Lertpatarakomol  2 , Tassanee Trairatapiwan  2 , Achara Lukkananukool  3
Affiliations

Influence of Incubation Temperature and Relative Humidity on the Egg Hatchability Pattern of Two-Spotted (Gryllus bimaculatus) and House (Acheta domesticus) Crickets

Jamlong Mitchaothai et al. Animals (Basel). .

Abstract

This study aimed to determine the influence and optimal conditions of incubation temperature and relative humidity (RH) on the egg hatchability patterns of two-spotted (Gryllus bimaculatus) and house (Acheta domesticus) crickets. Experiment I involved 100 cricket eggs per hatching box for each species, with six replications for each controlled incubation temperature of 23, 25, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, and 33 °C at 70% RH. Experiment II used all the same procedures as Experiment I, except for incubation temperatures of 29, 30, 31, and 32 °C tested with varied RH levels of 65%, 70%, and 75%. In Experiment I, two-spotted crickets (9.47 ± 1.99 days) exhibited faster hatching than house crickets (13.70 ± 2.78 days). Additionally, the onset of hatching decreased with higher incubation temperatures for both types of crickets. In Experiment II, an incubation temperature of 31 °C and 70% RH resulted in a hatching rate of 79.75% for two-spotted crickets, with hatching beginning in 6 days. For house cricket eggs, the optimal conditions of 30 °C and 65-75% RH led to a peak daily hatching rate of 62.00-65.50% and hatching onset in 12 days. Thus, this study established the optimal incubation temperature and RH for egg hatching of two-spotted and house crickets.

Keywords: egg hatchability pattern; house cricket (Acheta domesticus); incubation temperature; relative humidity; two-spotted cricket (Gryllus bimaculatus).

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The cricket egg-hatching incubation unit comprises one cooling generation box equipped with a Peltier module and two incubation boxes. The hatching boxes containing cricket eggs are placed into the incubation boxes during the incubation process.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Scheme of Experiments I and II for the current study. Experiment I: Different ambient incubation temperature levels were applied to hatch both studied cricket species. Experiment II: The results indicating the possible optimum incubation temperature levels from Experiment I were selected to test the influence of ambient relative humidity in both studied cricket species.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Mean daily hatching rates (%) of two-spotted (a) and house (b) crickets each day after being exposed to different incubation temperatures.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Mean daily hatching rates (%) of two-spotted (a) and house (b) crickets each day after being exposed to different levels of relative humidity and incubation temperatures of 29 °C (a1,b1), 30 °C (a2,b2), 31 °C (a3,b3), or 32 °C (a4,b4).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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