I get this question a lot. The quick answer is no. We keep about 20 species of stomatopods in my lab and they are all research animals acquired with the use of funds from various internal and extramural sources. Any animals acquired using funds awarded to the University of California actually belong to the university and not me. They are not mine to sell and the thought of the paperwork that would be involved should I ever want to try to sell them makes me cringe. A couple of times I have traded animals that I personally collected for scientifically valuable specimens held by a private individual. Even here, I am careful to involve only animals that were not acquired using grant funds.
I have watched the interest in stomatopods grow over the past few years and I understand the frustration that many aquarists feel when they can't find animals they want. On the other hand, there are many times more animals available through U.S. collectors and importers than ever before. Animals can be had if you work with a cooperative local LFS to purchase them from wholesalers or you can deal directly with distributors who sell to private individuals.
Again, I'm sorry I can't be of help acquiring stomatopods. All I can do is provide some information about the different species that hopefully hobbyists will find useful.
Let me make one additional comment. I might ask "What's in it for me to spend time trying to answer questions about stomatopods?". First and foremost, I am fascinated by stomatopods and I enjoy sharing that curiosity with others. Second, much of my research is funded by grants from the state and federal government and I feel some obligation to share what I learn not only through publishing in scientific journals but through public speaking, making films, writing popular articles and now through the internet. Finally, having an informed contingent of hobbyists can lead to scientific discovery. Right now in my lab I have three stomatopods that I obtained from amateur stomatopodiatrists who recognized something unique about these animals and let me have them. One is a little known species from southern California that for the first time that I am aware of has laid eggs in captivity. In fact, this is the first time that eggs have been seen in this species - period. We now know that Pseudosquillposis marmorata can store sperm for at least six months (the time I had her in the lab before she laid) and that the eggs develop far more slowly than occurs in most stomatopods. The second is a male Odontodactylus cultrifer that possesses a unique polarized light signaling system. Several years ago such a system was postulated to exist in stomatopods because of their unusual visual system, but it never had been observed. I has suspected that adult male O. cultrifer might have this signal, but in five years of searching for one in Australia and Indonesia, all I have found were two juveniles and a female. An aquarist alerted me that an unusual stomatopod was for sale in a local LFS. It was a male O. cultrifer and it had exactly the signal we predicted. The third is an unusual stomatopod that showed up in a LFS last month. It is completely new to science and will probably be described as a new genus as well as a new species. I was going to say that I had never seen it before, but once I saw it, I remembered a dive off Toli Toli North Sulawesi where I and a colleague spent hours and several tanks of air trying to chip a large stomatopod out of a cavity in a large boulder only to lose it when the rock finally split. I'm sure it was this species.
It is by having a lot of informed eyes out there that made these discoveries possible and I hope will keep them coming. Thanks!
Roy
