Return to Albany, California (Winter Break 2017-2018): Manduca sexta

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.

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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. 

At that point, we could have pulled the plug and thrown away the eggs, but because the tomato plants were still heavily leaved, we decided to give our mother the heads up for continuing the line. For someone who has no experience with rearing insects at all, she did an okay job, although she did report at some point that a bacterial infection killed a number of them off near the end. Fifteen pupae made it, which should be enough to continue the line some time in the future, which should be possible since these are diapausing. 

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

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Authors
Brian Liang

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