Mexican Bush Katydids Hatch

Our Mexican bush katydids (Scudderia mexicana) eggs from last year have begun to hatch.

---

Last year in late summer we collected over a hundred Mexican bush katydids (Scudderia mexicana) eggs laid by a handful of females that we had painstakingly captured, reared, and mated from nymphal stages. Many of the eggs were inserted into leaves or flower petals, probably the most natural location for oviposition in the wild, but it seems that many of these eggs had desiccated along with the leaf over the months sitting a petri dish. A number of eggs were, however, deposited in plastic tape that were apart of the mesh cage that the females were housed in that didn't seem to face this problem. 

A few weeks ago, we noticed that the eggs in the tape were becoming noticeably plumper and pinkish in color. On this 5/13 post, we got a few shots of the eggs that show the developing katydids and it was quite evident that they were going to hatch very soon. 

The first of the eggs finally hatched today - three of them. They hatch by breaking the egg (which is very flat) with a sharp horn on their heads some place where the two disk-shaped halves of the eggshell come together. The newly emerged katydids are a pale pink which is the same color as the developing eggs (the eggs are probably translucent). After a few hours, they eventually tan into a dirty brownish pink. 

After we consolidated the newborns with the two nymphs (one first instar and one second instar) we have, we noticed that the newborns were unwilling to settle down. Whereas the older nymphs rarely stray from the food source, the newborns consistently crawled to the lid of the container. Like most newborn caterpillar that take a day before settling down on host plant, this behavior is probably designed to get them to find a suitable living place considering that eggs in the wild are probably located in all kinds of obscure places on the ground. 

---

Authors
Brian Liang

---