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:
6/29: ![]() Authors Brian Liang
Comments
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:
6/27:
6/26:
6/25:
6/24:
6/23:
![]() Authors Alan Liang 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:
6/24:
6/23:
![]() Authors Alan Liang 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:
6/28:
6/27:
6/26:
6/25:
6/24: ![]() Authors Alan Liang 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:
6/28:
6/27:
![]() Authors Alan Liang 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 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 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 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:
6/27:
6/26:
6/25: ![]() Authors Alan Liang |
Timeline 2012–2017
Albany, California This timeline is a series of daily posts recording our observations on and experiences with various insects in Albany California and surrounding areas, from 2012-2017. Since we did not publish this site until 2016, posts before that were constructed retroactively. Starting in August 2017, we moved to Ithaca, New York; posts from there on can be viewed at Timeline 2017-present: Ithaca, New York. Archives (1,011)
August 2017 (49) July 2017 (121) June 2017 (79) May 2017 (77) April 2017 (91) March 2017 (35) February 2017 (12) January 2017 (10) December 2016 (12) November 2016 (26) October 2016 (49) September 2016 (84) August 2016 (94) July 2016 (99) June 2016 (53) May 2016 (21) April 2016 (4) January 2016 (1) August 2015 (3) July 2015 (3) June 2015 (2) June 2014 (3) May 2014 (1) April 2014 (3) March 2014 (3) December 2013 (2) November 2013 (2) October 2013 (5) September 2013 (11) August 2013 (15) July 2013 (9) June 2013 (5) May 2013 (4) April 2013 (3) March 2013 (2) February 2013 (3) January 2013 (2) December 2012 (2) November 2012 (1) October 2012 (2) September 2012 (2) August 2012 (5) July 2012 (1) June 2012 (1) Authors
![]() ![]() Full Species List (Alphabetical by scientific name) Note: - Not every species we encounter is necessarily presented on this site, rather a selection of those that were of particular interest to us and that we felt were worth documenting. - We can't guarantee that all species have been identified accurately, particularly taxa we are not as familiar with. Lepidoptera Actias luna Adelpha californica Agraulis vanillae Allancastria cerisyi Antheraea mylitta Antheraea polyphemus Anthocharis sara Argema mimosae Attacus atlas Battus philenor hirsuta Bombyx mori Caligo atreus Callosamia promethea Coenonympha tullia california Citheronia regalis Cricula trifenestrata Danaus plexippus Eacles imperialis Erynnis tristis Estigmene acrea Eumorpha achemon Eupackardia calleta Furcula cinereoides Heliconius erato Heliconius hecale Heliconius sapho Heliconius sara Hyalophora cecropia Hyalophora columbia Hyalophora euryalus Hylephila phyleus Hyles lineata Junonia coenia Langia zenzeroides formosana Lophocampa maculata Manduca sexta Morpho peleides Nymphalis antiopa Orgyia vetusta Orthosia hibisci quenquefasciata Pachysphinx modesta Papilio cresphontes Papilio eurymedon Papilio glaucus Papilio machaon oregonius Papilio multicaudata Papilio polyxenes asterius Papilio rumiko Papilio rutulus Papilio zelicaon Phyciodes mylitta Phyciodes pulchella Pieris rapae Plejebus acmon Poanes melane Polites sabuleti Polygonia satyrus Pyrgus communis Rothschildia jacobaeae Samia cynthia advena Samia ricini Smerinthus cerisyi Smerinthus ophthalmica Strymon melinus Trichoplusia ni Uresephita reversalis Vanessa annabella Vanessa atalanta Vanessa cardui Unidentified Lepidoptera Hybrids Papilio glaucus × Papilio rutulus Papilio polyxenes asterius × Papilio zelicaon Orthoptera Melanoplus devastator Phaneroptera nana Pristoceuthophilus pacificus Scudderia mexicana Trimerotropis pallidipennis Phasmatodea Carausius morosus Phyllium giganteum Mantodea Mantis religiosa Phyllocrania paradoxa Hymenoptera Apis mellifera Bombus vosnesenskii Brachymeria ovata Linepithema humile Pediobius sp. Polistes dominula Xylocopa varipuncta Unidentified Diptera Lucilia sericata Unidentified Hemiptera Brochymena sp. Leptoglossus sp. Nezara viridula Odonata Argia vivida Libellula croceipennis Coleoptera Coccinella septempunctata Cycloneda polita Diabrotica undecimpunctata Hippodamia convergens Araneae (Class: Arachnida) Araneus diadematus Phidippus johnsoni |