​Rearing Notes for our Mexican Bush Katydids (Scuderria mexicana) that we found as nymphs of various instars in our front and backyards during the spring and summer of 2012. They were reared to adults in a glass fish aquarium with a homemade screen lid. Soil and live bean plants (Phaseolus) were added as the primarily food source but picked flowers were often put in to supplement their diet. All were eventually released back into the wild.

Rearing Notes 8/17/12-8/31/12:

- Alan, Brian

Rearing notes for our four Indian Walkingstick nymphs (Carausius morosus) we found on ornamental dahlia flowers (Dahlia) in our front yard in the summer of 2012. One was a very young instar (second?) and the other three were slightly older (third or fourth?). All four were reared to adults on dahlia leaves in a plastic food container at first but later Romaine lettuce (Lactuca sativa) in a plastic ventilated tank and produced eggs until their death which were kept to produce future broods.

Rearing Notes 8/9/12-8/27/12:

- Alan, Brian

Today we found a huge European Garden Spider (Araneus diadematus) in our backyard eating a fly!

European Garden Spiders (Araneus diadematus) are an extremely common introduced species and some years, such as this year, our yard is covered in them. In the spring, wherever we walked we would see tons of newborns in their individual silken webs. Now that it is August, many of them have either died off or left, but a few big ones still pop up once in a while. This morning, we ran into one in our backyard in a little corner in the shed by our garage. Like all orb weaver spiders, European Garden Spiders specialize in spinning huge orb webs (proportional to the size of the spider, which was huge) for catching prey and it appeared that it had caught and was eating a Green Bottle Fly (Lucilia sericata) and in the afternoon we found it eating another spider!

- Brian

Rearing notes for our single Western Tiger Swallowtail caterpillar (Papilio rutulus) that we found as a third instar this month on an apple tree (Malus domestica) in our backyard. This is an extremely unusual host for this species and is not listed as one by most sources, and some even say that larvae will not survive on it despite the female butterfly ovipositing on it. This is only the second time we have encountered a larval P. rutulus, but sadly, it was already parasitized.

Rearing Notes 8/8/12-8/10/12:

- Alan, Brian

Rearing Notes for our Mexican Bush Katydids (Scuderria mexicana) that we found as nymphs of various instars in our front and backyards during the spring and summer of 2012. They were reared to adults in a glass fish aquarium with a homemade screen lid. Soil and live bean plants (Phaseolus) were added as the primarily food source but picked flowers were often put in to supplement their diet. All were eventually released back into the wild.

Rearing Notes 7/16/12-8/6/12:

- Alan, Brian