Found Another Papilio rutulus Egg By Accident

Without realizing it, we cut a branch of willow (Salix) today that had a western tiger swallowtail (Papilio rutulus​) on it!

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Since we caught a female western tiger swallowtail (Papilio rutulus) two days ago,  we have set up an outdoor ovipositing cage for her. Because the weather has been and will be extremely warm for where we live for the next several days, we figured that we would give this large cage in natural sunlight method (similar to this) a chance before trying the indoor hot box. The main host plant that we provided were willow (Salix) cuttings, the same variety that we found our egg nine days ago.

This morning, for convenience's sake, we got the cuttings from the garden in Memorial Park, making sure to get ones with the worst leaves so as to preserve the health of the tree and to save the better leaves for potential feeder food in the future. The willows there have recently gotten a bad case of fungal infection, so many of the leaves were curled and wrinkled but we didn't think that this would significantly deter our rutulus female as long as they were fresh.

By the end of the day today, around 6 PM, we removed the dried out cuttings and investigated whether there were any freshly laid eggs by the female. We didn't find any but we did somehow find what was probably a week old egg on one of the cuttings. 

This find really surprised us considering we always make sure to briefly scan our cuttings for eggs when we obtain them. Not only did we somehow initially miss this egg, but having gotten just the right cutting was just incredible luck. After finding egg, we went back and thoroughly checked the willow trees and nearby potential host trees but couldn't find any more. 

Unfortunately, the first egg we found had hatched early in the afternoon so we weren't able to compare the two eggs. (If only we had discovered the new egg when we got the cuttings in the morning!) However, based on pictures of the two eggs side by side using identical zoom, it seems that the new egg could be slightly larger than the old one, although this could be affected by the angles of the pictures. 

Authors
Brian Liang

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