First Diapheromera femorata Egg Hatches

The first of our Diapheromera femorata eggs hatched. Stock originated from wild collected females in Ithaca, New York, August 2018.

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Last fall, we found several adult Diapheromera femorata males and females that eventually produced hundreds of eggs. We put these in the fridge to overwinter along with our Lepidoptera pupae and took the eggs out on May 25. After less than a month, one of the eggs finally hatched. The newborn is bright green with a slender body, very elongated legs, and a slightly curled abdomen with a pair of cerci at the tip. The egg shell was stuck to its hind leg when we first saw it, a common problem for stick insect newborns due to insufficient humidity, which may have caused its leg to be bent.

Compared to the small brown newborns of Carausius morosus which we reared in California, this newborn is quite a lot larger with much more elongated legs and does not hold its abdomen nearly as curled. ​They also took much longer to hatch and required humidity cues to do so, unlike these that quite promptly began hatching after overwintering. 

We have never reared this species from egg, so we do not know what host plants are ideal for the nymphs. We fed the adults oak last fall which worked very well since it is supposedly the preferred host for the adults. However, we are not sure if the newborn nymphs will eat it since the leaves are extremely tough. For now, we gave it a cutting of oak and put it in a plastic container and will leave it overnight to see if it eats any. If it doesn’t, we will try some alternative plants.
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Since we want to prevent future newborns from having their egg shells stuck to their leg, we transferred the eggs from the petri dish to a plastic container and sprayed them with water.

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Alan Liang​
​Alan Liang is a student at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York pursuing an undergraduate degree in entomology. He is co-owner and a main contributor of the Liang Insects blog and photographs.

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