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Nymphalis antiopa Egg Rearing Notes (6/29/17-6/30/16)

6/30/2017

Rearing notes for a mourning cloak (Nymphalis antiopa) egg cluster found on willow (Salix) along the Ohlone Greenway Trail (Berkeley, California).

Rearing notes 6/29/17-6/30/17:

6/30:

The eggs got noticeably darker throughout the day, although not all eggs were developing at the same rate; by evening, most of the shells had become clear

6/29:

See Found a Mourning Cloak Egg Cluster

Authors
Brian Liang

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Unidentified Erebid (Zale?)Larva L5 Rearing Notes (6/23/17-6/30/17)

6/30/2017

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Rearing notes for an unidentified erebid (Zale?) larva. It was collected on collected on willow (Salix sp.) in Albany, California, June 2017.

Rearing Notes 6/23/17-6/30/17:

6/30:

The prepupa pupated and tanned into a reddish brown; it appears to be female based on the location of the genital groove; the abdomen is narrow and tapered, with a pointy cremaster

6/27:

As suspected, the larva was full grown and has now made a shelter out of the willow leaves and some strands of silk; it now rests inside immobile and much smaller than before as a prepupa

6/26:

The larva fed quite a bit but doesn't look too much larger this time and is slightly sluggish; perhaps about to become a prepupa?

6/25:

The larvae is quite a bit larger again, probably near full grown by now; it seems to have a preference for the newer shoots and avoids the mature, tough ones even when it is the only thing available

6/24:

The larva has grown incredibly, becoming much larger than before; its cuticle has smoothed out and it feeds frequently

6/23:

The larva molted into what we believe is its final instar after spending just four days in the last; the appearance is the same but the cuticle is much baggier and looser, plenty of room to grow a lot larger from the looks

Authors
Alan Liang

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Smerinthus ophthalmica Rearing Notes (6/23/17-6/30/17)

6/30/2017

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Rearing notes for our Smerinthus ophthalmica moths. This stock originated from wild eggs or larvae collected in Albany, California, June 2016 and April 2017.

Rearing Notes 6/23/17-6/30/17:

6/30:

The female has laid over 300 eggs

6/24:

The female has already laid dozens of eggs; we let it lay some on a potted willow outside to see if they would develop differently in an outdoor environment (Smerinthus ophthalmica Egg Development Photo Sequence (Outdoors))

6/23:

The last of out pupa from our spring rearing eclosed into a large tan form female, quite a bit later than the other pupae because it was not part of the original lineage, but from a wild collected egg in late April
We had been holding onto four males for about a week now (also from wild collected eggs in April), anticipating this female's eclosion and hoping to pair them, but the males are all very small (probably genetic) and of a nearly pure grey form, so their genes are not so good; we ended up letting the males go and setting to female outside in a flight cage to call in wild males; only an hour after it got dark it, it had paired, but to our dismay, the male appeared to be one that we had just released!

Authors
Alan Liang

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Actias luna L1 Rearing Notes (6/24/17-6/29/17)

6/29/2017

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Rearing notes for our luna moth (Actias luna) first instar larvae. The stock originated as eggs from Alabama, April 2017.

Rearing Notes 6/24/17-6/29/17:

6/29:

The larvae have grown very quickly, already preparing to molt to second instar; they are a little variable in size, but most are around 6-7 mm

6/28:

It is truly shocking how well these larvae tolerate massive overcrowding at this age as mortality has been virtually 0 percent; in fact, if anything, they seem to benefit from the edges of the leaves constantly being cut and open due to the constant feeding that makes it easier for individuals to feed much like in gregarious larvae

6/27:

More larvae hatched today, but only a couple dozen; seems most eggs have hatched already
The older larvae look about full grown now and have become very cylindrical and plump

6/26:

And again... more larvae hatched... over a hundred of them; another tub and sweet gum it is
The older larvae are growing incredibly fast, practically doubling in size since birth

6/25:

At least a hundred more larvae hatched today and we're placed in a new tub with sweet gum
The larvae from yesterday have already settled down and grown noticeably since hatching, becoming brighter green and plumper; although they are solitary, they appear gregarious due to their tendency to feed at the cut edges of the leaf

6/24:

See Luna Eggs Have Begun to Hatch

Authors
Alan Liang

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Cricula trifenestrata L2 Rearing Notes (6/27/17-6/29/17)

6/29/2017

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Rearing notes for our cricula silkmoth (Cricula trifenesetrata) second instar larvae. Stock obtained as eggs, June 2017.

Rearing Notes 6/27/17-6/29/17:

6/29:

Sadly, upon checking on the larvae today, we discovered both lying dead and shriveled on the bottom of the container much like how the other ones died; can't think of any explanation for the deaths except that they didn't take well to the Rhododendron?

6/28:

Well, the larvae have paired together again and are feeding from the same hole; they are slightly larger than before

6/27:

Both of the larger larvae molted to second instar after spending eight days in first instar
The second instar is quite different from first instar in appearance, being orangish brown and hairier, with a large orange head
The remaining first instar died

Authors
Alan Liang

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First Black Swallowtail Ecloses

6/29/2017

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The first of our 12 black swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes asterius) pupae has eclosed.

Well, this is a bit sooner than expected. One of our black swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes asterius) pupae has already eclosed today. Unlike the anise (Papilio zelicaon), the signs were quite obvious many days before it actually happened. First, the pupa got some "burnt" edges, or black dots, speckled across what appeared to be the pupal shell and then the actual internal portion just started getting blacker and blacker. The pharate pupa was crystal clear.

The particular pupa that emerged today was quite a large one out the 12 and, as predicted, it was a female. The upper sides of the wings are a musty black color. You could tell that there was some sort of a nasty yellow undertone that it was trying to cover up.

Although we don't have any live zelicaon's to do a careful comparison with, it just seems that the wingspan on this one is relatively large for the size of the pupa it came out of. The legs and abdomen also seem rather long and skinny, proportionally. We expected that the vein lines forming the various dots and checkers of zelicaon would be identical on the polyxenes expect, of course, for the colors, but there are definitely some minor differences. For example, the blue parts on the front side is a lot more, the anal eyespot pupils are much smaller, and the abdomen pattern is completely a different thing. And, to throw it out there, the polyxenes doesn't look anywhere close to the model mimicry, Battus philenor, to the human eye when put side by side. It would probably be hard to tell in flight, though.

After this female emerged, we got excited about catching some zelicaon to try to attempt hybridizations. We actually caught a wild female zelicaon this morning, but it escaped after we tried to get it to lay eggs in our cage because there was a hole in it. We saw another female and a male in the afternoon in Berkeley, but were unable to catch them with our broken net. Quite sad. For now, we have placed our zelicaon pupae into the incubator to see if they can catch up to some of the later polyxenes, but we will probably still have to keep trying to catch some wild ones if we actually want to get this hybridization thing going. Otherwise, we still intend on creating some pure lines of the polyxenes so that we can also compare the larval stages.

Authors
Brian Liang

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Found a Mourning Cloak Egg Cluster

6/29/2017

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Today we found a cluster of mourning cloak (Nymphalis antiopa) eggs laid on an isolated willow tree (Salix) along the Ohlone Greenway Trail (Berkeley, California).

Considering that we basically never see the adult of the mourning cloak (Nymphalis antiopa) in all our years, it was quite a surprise that of all things, it is their eggs that we found on an isolated willow tree (Salix) growing at the end of the block of the Ohlone Greenway Trail in Berkeley California. To this day, more or less our only accounts of the butterfly have occurred at Albany Hill and they were all very old and worn males. Because these nymphalids have such a long lifespan, we sort of assumed that the very few we actually saw around were strays that may have occasionally breed on the willow trees but didn't have a strongly established population in our area. In fact, we still don't know even after finding the egg cluster.

The egg cluster we found was located a few feet off the ground, about halfway up a medium sized willow (a variety that we have never encountered before and may or may not be native) that, strangely, was located in shade underneath BART tracks. The tree itself, however, was quite excellent. Also a bit odd was that the eggs were laid on the underside of a leaf rather than around a stem, which is a much more frequently reported laying site of antiopa.

By the time we had found the eggs, it was quite clear that they were already close to hatching. The eggs were mostly all a dark shade of red; they are supposedly a pale yellow when first laid based on internet pictures. For some reason though, they didn't seem uniform in their stage of development with a few strips along the edges still looking orange rather than red and one of the eggs was empty. Either something ate it or the butterfly somehow laid this by itself. In any case, we hope that the eggs are not parasitized since this kind of thing tends to happen in the eggs of Nymphalidae.

Authors
Brian Liang

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First Papilio rutulus Female Ecloses, Fails Miserably

6/28/2017

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The first of our two female western tiger swallowtails (Papilio rutulus) eclosed today but it failed to expand its wings.

This entire day we had been waiting in anticipation for the first of our two western tiger swallowtail (Papilio rutulus) females to eclose. In fact, just two days ago we had managed to capture, with quite some degree of luck, a very large and healthy wild male at Albany Hill in order to hand-pair. Trying to get the female to eclose as soon as possible as not to have to keep the male in captivity for too long and because we are to get our wisdom teeth extracted in two days and don't want to deal with setting things up at that time, we had put the chrysalis into the incubator.

By the time we returned home today from gathering leaves, the butterfly had already broken the front portion of the pupal shell and had crawled up the side of the incubator. This is not supposed to happen. A butterfly that is ready to emerge should have to trouble at all getting out of the shell. Immediately alarmed, we tried to see whether the butterfly had emerged on accident, perhaps due to excessive handling before or the unnatural conditions of the incubator, but apparently it had not. It had legitimately tried to emerge but had trouble breaking the back of the pupal cuticle based on the fact that it seemed to have attempted to expand its wings within it; the wings looked slightly stretched and were completely dry when the cuticle was removed. In addition, it had no trouble connecting the pieces of its proboscis, which is something that only occurs when the wings expand.

Of all of the pupae we have that could have failed to eclose, this was a pretty tragic choice. We tried to make the best of the situation, but the crippled female was basically unworkable because its abdomen was completely soaked in dried meconium that it released while the shell was still stuck. The abdomen was weak and flabby and was not firm like a strong butterfly should be. We were very surprised that the hand-pairing still seemed to turn out okay.

After the hand-pairing we cut the crippled wings because they are useless and only serve as a handicap. We got a plastic tub and put in some willow (Salix) cuttings and stuck the female inside. We plan on putting the tub in the incubator to try to get some activity going. After all, we have seen very beat up female swallowtails that also can't fly lay eggs before. We just hope that this crippled rutulus female doesn't die out of weakness before it even has a chance. The good thing is that we still have one more female chrysalis that should emerge within a week.

Authors
Brian Liang

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Manduca sexta L1 Rearing Notes (6/25/17-6/28/17)

6/28/2017

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Rearing notes for our Carolina sphinx (Manduca sexta) first instar larvae. Stock originated as eggs, June 2017.

Rearing Notes 6/25/17-6/28/17:

6/28:

And again, a shocking gain in size - they must be several times larger than when they hatched now, measuring 10 mm which is larger than the first instar in many other species
Upon close examination, the larvae's cuticles have become granulated and there are two stripes going lengthwise down the dorsal side

6/27:

The larvae are growing incredibly quickly, much larger than they were yesterday again and greener
These larvae have very soft, thin cuticles, as it is very easy to accidentally injure or squish them unlike other larvae we have reared

6/26:

The larvae have literally doubled in size, perhaps more, since hatching yesterday; they have become green and robust, practically ready for the next instar from the looks; interesting to note, unlike many other larvae that have a habit of feeding from the tip or edges of the leaves, these larvae don't seem to care where they eat, just sticking their mouths anywhere and making holes in the center and sides of the leaves
The remainder of the eggs hatched; though terribly overcrowded, we stuffed all the larvae into two containers with tomato cuttings; hopefully they'll be find at this age

6/25:

See Manduca sexta Eggs Hatch

Authors
Alan Liang

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Papilio rutulus Rearing Notes (6/21/17-6/27/17)

6/27/2017

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Rearing notes for our western tiger swallowtail (Papilio rutulus) larvae. These were wild collected on willows (Salix) at Albany Hill (Albany, California), June 2017.

Rearing notes 6/20/17-6/27/17:

6/27:

6/26:

6/25:

6/22:

6/21:

Authors
Brian Liang

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