Mourning Cloaks Begin to Eclose

Our mourning cloaks (Nymphalis antiopa) are beginning to eclose now. They originated from an egg cluster collected on willow (Salix) along the Ohlone Greenway Trail (Berkeley, California), June 29, 2017.

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After an alarmingly short 9-11 days since pupation, several of our antiopas eclosed today. The butterflies emerged both from the incubator and in the containers in the room, so it seems the temperature hardly made a difference in developmental speed if any at all. In fact, most of the remaining pupae all look quite close to eclosion. For these pupae, we got a large tub lined with paper towels and spread them on the bottom for eclosion.

The adult butterflies are very large for nymphalids and are not sexually dimorphic, though the females are slightly larger than males (and were more massive as pupae). They fold their wings at rest which, ventrally, are black with a white boarder, making them extremely cryptic on dark, bark-like backgrounds. On the other hand, the dorsal side when opened is very stunning, having a reddish brown ground color with a cream boarder and a row of blue spots on black. The wing shapes are also quite unique, being irregularly scalloped on the margins. The body is short and rounded - typical nymphalid shape, and is very hairy.

​Unfortunately, we just now realized that if had acted sooner, we could have cold-shocked the fresh pupae in the refrigerator to induce stunning aberrants with the cream boarder enlarged and consuming the black portion with blue spots. All the remaining pupae are already quite developed and are thus too old to be cold shocked.

Shockingly, of the remaining pupae, a tachnid parasitoid exited a reddish undeveloped one and pupated which is extremely confusing to us since the larvae were all reared from egg indoors and the container was almost always closed - could it be possible that there had been a tachnid flying around in the house and somehow parasitized some of the larvae without us noticing while we were changing them? We really can't figure this one out. But, hopefully, of the remaining pupae, not too many more are parasitized.

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​Authors
Alan Liang

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