One advantage to culturing your own rnealworms is that you eventually have thern in a variety of sizes to suit your animals' needs. instead of having only the standard rnedium size offered in pet stores. Two-to-five-week old rnealworrns can be invaluable for feeding srnaller lizards; adultrnealwormsshould on1y be fed to the larger species of lizard. Another great advantage to raising rnealworrns yourself is that you are able to offer your lizards "white" soft-bodied rnealworrns which have just molted; these are easily digested. Recently, the use of mealworms as a lizard food has fallen into disfavor because the tough chitinous exoskeleton makes them relatively difficult for smaller lizards to digesto All of us who have kept lizards have seen one stuff itself on mealworms one day and regurgitate the entire meal the following day. Feeding smaller mealworms, smaller quantities at one time, and "white" mealworms reduces the incidence of such problems.

As a general rule, mealworms should be offered as part of a varied insect diet., which for many lizard species consists primarily of crickets. But this is not a hard and fast rule; diets should be adjusted according to the lizard species. Generally speaking/ larger lizards, whose jaws are capab!e of cutting through the exoskeleton, fare better with a higher percentage of mealworms in their diet than do smaller lizards. The only suitable mealworms for feeding smalllizards are correspondingly tiny ones, whose exoskeleton is likely to be torn by the smaller lizards' jaws; they should also be offered in small quantities.

Mealworms in various stages of development can also be usefuI as a part of the diet for certain species. With lizards that recognize prey by scent (e.g., some of the skinks), mealworm pupae can be offered as food. For some species of lizards, such as the toad-headed agamid (Phrynocephalus mystaceus), mealworm beetles can also be a valuable food source (though many other lizards will not touch them).

Caution: Do not feed more mealworms than your lizard can eat. Hungry mealworms can injure, and even kill, small lizards that are sleeping on the ground. Mealworms have been implicated in injuries to toes and damage of the cloacal and dorsal-pelvic areas. Feeding only as many as your lizard is likely to eat, plus putting a small piece of carrot in each enclosure (and replacing it as often as needed) canhelp in preventing this from happening.

King mealworms (Zophobas morio)

These resemble mealworms, though they are larger and have somewhat softer bodies. Requiring higher temperatures for maintenance, they are best kept stored at room temperature. They can be maintained like mealworms, except for a greater need for warmth; they al so require more vegetable matter as a source of moisture. All that was said about mealworms also applies here. Some of the larger species ofJizards (e.g., adult tokay geckos, basilisks and water dragons) have been maintained successfully long-term on diets consisting primarily of supplemented king mealworms and immature mice.

If these worms are left loose in a vivarium, they can become a problem. They readily eat any eggs they come across; they can also cause injuries (or even death) to torpid smaller reptiles in a vivarium.