Ideally, we probably should have done it immediately when we returned to Albany California in mid-December or perhaps even ask our mother to do it for us even earlier, but as of today we have begun refrigerating (40°F/4-5°​C) our pupae that require it. 

These include: all of the Saturniidae--cecropia (Hyalophora cecropia), luna (Actias luna), and regal (Citheronia regalis); Manduca sexta; and, we are assuming, the pale swallowtails (Papilio eurymedon), which come from Utah/Oregon, and eastern festoon (Allancastria cerisyi). Although our Smerinthus opthalmica pupae are native stock that do not require cold treatment, we also decided to toss twenty of so of these in as well as a risk splitting measure because it is difficult to predict what the situation will be when the ones outside the refrigerator emerge. Ideally, we would have put all of the opthalmica pupae in the refrigerator as well as the diapausing pupae of the other species we have such as the western tigers (Papilio rutulus​) and anise (Papilio zelicaon) swallowtails but because all of these are native, it could potentially be harmful in the long run. 

​We have returned to Albany, California from Ithaca, New York as per Cornell University's winter closing, giving us a chance to see the  preseved hybrid ♀ Papilio polyxenes × ♂ zelicaon that eclosed while we were in Ithaca.

In a post from last August (Albany Updates (8/23/17): ♀ Papilio polyxenes × ♂ zelicaon Adult Male), we mentioned how one of our hybrid pupae had eclosed back in Albany, California while our family was in Ithaca, New York. By the time our mother got home (of course, we stayed in Ithaca), the butterfly was evidently already beat itself up quite a bit based on photographs of the live specimen that our mother sent. But since we obviously did not want to opportunity to see this unique specimen go waste, we had our mother do the best she could to preserve it via pinning. She is nowhere near an experienced pinner, but her work is good enough so that we can more or less see everything on the butterfly. 

Below are the photographs of the front and back of this male hybrid. 

For some perspective, we also took shots of the hybrid next to pinned male P. polyxenes asterius and female P. zelicaon (wing pattern sexual dimorphism not too significant in zelicaon​, so should be an okay comparison). ​

At first glance, the hybrid may resemble the polyxenes more, simply because of the blackness. However, it should not take long to realize how it appears to be more or less a perfect intermediate of the two species.  

We collected some Gulf fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) larvae on the passion vines (Passiflora sp.) along the Ohlone Greenway Trail (El Cerrito, California).

It's been months since we actually went out and collected any insects because it got too cold in Ithaca to find anything. However, having returned to California for the past few weeks, the weather has actually been quite reasonable (at least compared to Ithaca's brutal winter) and there are plenty of nice winter insects to find around here. 

One of those is the Gulf fritillary, a butterfly that breeds year-round here. We found several larvae of various stages on passions vines along the Ohlone Greenway Trail today. There were also many empty pupae on dead vines, and even one that appeared to still be alive. It's actually quite shocking how common this species is around here now despite that it has only arrived in California within the past couple of decades. The larvae are especially easy to find at this time of year, perhaps due to the low parasitism and predation rates during this season, and also perhaps because the winters are considered the "wet"' seasons here. In the summer, a better bet is to look for eggs or catch wild females to lay eggs. 

It's interesting to note the striking difference in coloration between summer and winter larvae. Larval coloration in Lepidoptera often seems to be dependent on the environment they are in. We've seen with several species that the larvae typically manifest a darker, or more melanic, coloration in cold weather and brighter coloration in hot weather, which can be seen in the Gulfs as well. These winter larvae that we collected today are primarily grey with only thin, poorly developed pale orange stripes. It is the opposite in summer, as they are primarily bright reddish-orange with thin grey stripes. ​

We are currently rearing the larvae in petri dishes with passion cuttings and are hoping they'll grow to a reasonable size before we fly back to Ithaca. If not, we'll probably have to put them on the potted passion vine in our yard and cage it up. 

​We have returned to Albany, California from Ithaca, New York as per Cornell University's winter closing, giving us a chance to check on our overwintering pupae.

Back in September, most of our luna moth (Actias luna) cocoons from larvae reared during the summer while we were still in Albany, California eclosed. Most of the moths were directly pinned by our mother (for no particular reason), shown below. 

But, we eggs were still obtained through a pairing for the sake of maintaining the stock. However, the eggs never hatched and we assumed that the pairing must not have been successful and that the eggs were infertile. However, now that we are back in Albany and have had a chance to examine these unhatched eggs, we can confirm that the eggs were in fact fertile because partially developed (green) larvae were visible underneath the egg shell. We suspect that, assuming that hatching conditions were normal, this may have to do with inbreeding as these eggs are at least the third generation inbred within this stock. In hindsight, this may also explain the severe dip in health of the second generation, marked with high mortality and extremely small size. A similar thing happened during the second inbred generation of larvae that we reared several years ago that originated from the same breeder. While this is purely speculation, the fact is that inbreeding is never a good thing in the long run. . . but unless there is an easy way or a very compelling reason to attempt to avoid it, it is the best option we have.

With that said, we are still keeping the handful of cocoons that did not eclose. All of them are dark brown, so are assumed to be in diapause and not dead. 

A lot of strange things have happened with our cecropia moth (Hyalophora cecropia) larvae since we left to Ithaca, New York in August. It is already strange enough that they took such a long time to complete their development, which can probably be attributed to bad rearing conditions outside as well as inbreeding, but another thing that we have never figured out is how so many of them disappeared from their sleeves over time. Of course, a number of them fell to disease or were attacked by European paper wasps (Polistes dominula) that were able to bite through the netting, but where the rest of them went has always been a mystery considering that we started off with several hundred and ended now with less than twenty.

We can only assume that a significant number of them must have found a way to escape the sleeves, despite them seemingly being clipped completely shut. Our mother did find a cocoon on our apple tree outside a sleeve while we were in Ithaca and another one when we first came back home to Albany, California. We ourselves spotted another one a few days ago on the tree that is now completely bare. 

Although the cocoons are drastically smaller than the ones that we reared last year and are far smaller than what they should ideally be, they seem healthy for the most part with the exception of two that we ended up throwing out because of low weight. 

It seems that it is almost impossible to get these to diapause as pupae. The pile of cocoons that had before we left to Ithaca, New York eclosed in September, despite receiving darkness treatment, with most of the moths being pinned by our mother as shown below.

But what is much worse than that is that a few days after we returned to Albany, California over winter break, the cocoons that resulted from the eggs laid by pairings that our mother made with the moths she did not pin started to eclose. While it was at least still possible to rear the larvae before on poor quality leaves, there is not much we (and eventually our mother, once we leave to Ithaca again very soon) can do this time unless we resort to searching for tender citrus (Citrus) leaves like we did last winter. At this time, we are simply not feeling motivated to go through this trouble for a species that we have reared so many times already, will continue to be a problem if we do not find a way to make them diapause, and is frankly an eyesore most of the time. Therefore, we have chosen to no longer continue rearing them, at least for no; if we ever want to rear them again, we will have to obtain a new stock. 

Although we have generally been unimpressed by the insect diversity in the Bay Area, it is hard to deny that we are concerned about the loss of stock of a few major species that we did have access to in Albany, California and not in Ithaca, New York. As of this winter break, we still maintain a decent number of wetern tiger swallowtail (Papilio rutulus) pupae, reared from the summer, as described in this recent post; these are probably the most important considering how difficult it already would be to maintain a stock of them even if did not have to leave to Ithaca. As for the other native species, we still have a handful of anise swallowtail (Papilio zelicaon) pupae reared or collected by our mother while we were in Ithaca, a fair number of pipevine swallowtail (Battus philenor hirsuta) pupae from larvae reared in summer, and a large number of Smerinthus opthalmica pupae also from larvae reared in the summer. 

It is especially important that we maintain this stock of anise because they are something that we could conceivably rear in Ithaca and would be very difficult to obtain otherwise (from other breeders). Further, if we encounter P. polyxenes asterius at some point in Ithaca, it would be a grand opportunity to conduct further experiments between the two, including hybridization. The main problem right now is that, at least historically and when reared in captivity, this local stock has proven to be quite poor in the execution of the winter diapause. Already we have thrown away a significant number of dead pupae while inspecting them today and can expect their numbers to continue to steadily decline before a chaotic emergence sometime in the spring. In fact, we have never had a huge success with breeding these from overwintering pupae and have always much more on collecting eggs as they appear in the wild in order to reinvigorate the colony. Nevertheless, the pupae that we have now are certainly better than nothing and if worst comes to worst, we can ask or mother to collect eggs for us as we still have fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) growing in our yard in Albany. 

The pipevine pupae arguably suffer an even higher diapause mortality rate (and losses from stray emergences) than the anise since most of them already enter diapause very early in the year. Less than half of what we initially had in June have made it to this winter break. The good thing is that, although they are one of the few species truly unique to our time in Albany (most other species at least have a regional counterpart in Ithaca), our hopes of breeding these was never high, so we will not concern ourselves too much with them. In the past, we have never been able to get the females to lay eggs in captivity, and even if we somehow managed to do it, we do not have easy access to live pipevine (Aristolochia spp.) plants  in Albany or Ithaca. Even if we were to stay in Albany, the most logical thing to do if we really did want to continue rearing them would be to just collect a fresh stock of them come Spring where the eggs and larvae are extremely easy to find in big numbers; the same cannot be said of the eggs and larvae of the other native species mentioned in this post. 

The opthalmica, like the rutulus and anise, are very important. Not only are they the easiest of the three to breed, both in Albany and in Ithaca, we also have the largest number of them (200+), even after finding a few dead ones and one that had been fed on by some sort of flesh-eating fly larvae (presumably not parasites). We can afford to make mistakes with these so we are considering risk-splitting them with several treatments: some we will overwinter in the refrigerator, some we will keep outside, and some we might bring over to Ithaca. 

When we first decided to purchase the stock as eggs online from a pet store in June, it was mainly just for the sake of seeing one representative of the Sphinginae and because the species is exceptionally easy to rear, grows fast, and performs well on cultivated tomato (Solanum) which we happened to have. There was no serious obligation to continue breeding them once we had seen them out through one life cycle since the species, however interesting, is so easily obtainable at any time and thus readily disposable. 

With this in mind, it would have made a lot of sense to force the larvae that we reared over the summer to diapause as pupae if we had known that we would never see them emerge anyway, after leaving to Ithaca, New York in August. We would miss out on perhaps the most important aspect of rearing this species through, which was to gain insight on how to care for the adults and experience on how to breed them--knowledge that may be useful in the future or to other, similar species. Fortunately, when the moths did emerge in September while we were away, our mother was able to try her hand at it and was able to successfully breed them as described in this old post. The moths that were not used for breeding were pinned (unprofessionally) so that we could view them upon our return. A few of these pinned moths are shown below. 

Although they are diapausing, these pupae squirm intensely when making contact with them!

​We have returned to Albany, California from Ithaca, New York as per Cornell University's winter closing, giving us a chance to check on our overwintering pupae.

This is the second in a series of posts that we will be making to address each of the species that we are still keeping in Albany, California, now that we are physically there over winter break, that will be covering the western tiger swallowtail (Papilio rutulus) pupae from larvae that were reared in August of this year.

The last post that was made regarding these pupae was just a few days after we moved to Ithaca, New York where we recorded the final mass data after all of the larvae had pupated as reported by our mother. 

Although all but three of the larvae had already pupated while we were still in Albany, this is the first time that we can officially showcase all of the pupae together, which is shown below. 

Interestingly, all three of the last pupae were light morphs, whereas 100% of the other pupae were dark with the exception of a few that we allowed to pupate outside on trees instead of in empty tubs. While nobody was home to see what was taking place in the last days of these three individuals' larval stages, it is assumed that they spent almost or all of their time as prepupae in the container that they were being kept in that was stuffed with willow (Salix) cuttings, suggesting that some factor related to presence of live plant material may influence color.  

While the overwintering naked pupae of most other species we have reared usually experience a fair number of losses, all of these rutulus pupae are still alive, which is both somewhat surprising and a relief, although there are still a few more months to go before they are to eclose. This high survival rate can probably be owed to a combination of excellent sanitation, both before and after pupation, and to the fact that this is local stock that follow very strict seasonality and so are well suited for going through this type of long diapause. The same cannot be said of the local anise swallowtails (Papilio zelicaon), which breed vigorously and haphazardly for as long as they possibly can, or the local pipevine swallowtails (Battus philenor hirsuta) that have a chaotic diapause pattern reminiscent of the tropics; both typically suffer significant losses during diapause. 

After four months in Ithaca, we have finally returned to our permanent residence in Albany, California where we still have a heap of overwintering pupae. This is the first of several posts that we will be making to update status of each species. 

In early September, we made a brief post indicating that the last of our regal moth (Citheronia regalis) larvae that we reared during the summer had finished pupating that also included a few photographs of prepupal larvae and pupal mass data that we received via email, both courtesy of our mother. But because the pupae were formed during our absence, this is actually the first time that we ourselves are seeing and photographing them; below are new photographs taken today of the thirteen pupae that are now three months old. 

​The sex ratio is oddly skewed with only three of them being female, but at least our hope of breeding a second generation with this stock was quite limited anyway as it is for numerous reasons. The pupae are very hard and fairly stiff; they do not squirm. Although they are glossy, most of the cuticle is actually rough with very distinct separation of segments, especially of the last one, and several odd bumps such as the pair of tough, elevated plates on the thorax. The head and mass of appendages, for some reason, have very little separation between them though. Overall, although they look quite similar to the pupae of the relatively closely related imperial moth (Eacles imperialis), the regal pupae have significantly shorter cremesters and are pitch black rather than dark brown.

While we were away, these pupae were kept in a small plastic tub which, in all honesty, was probably not a very good housing solution for an extended periods of time given climate of the house. Fortunately, all thirteen pupae that were present upon our return appear to be alive (although sixteen data points were previously recorded?). However, before taking the pictures that are shown, they were covered in a few tiny white mites that we can only assume must have been eating away at what dead external material and were not necessarily harming the pupae themselves. Like most pupae, they have a distinctive, somewhat unpleasant, odor to them.