Our western tiger swallowtail (Papilio rutulus) eggs, laid by a captive hand-paired female on July 7, have begun to hatch. Finally, after nine days of anxious anticipation, the first western tiger swallowtail (Papilio rutuus) eggs have started to hatch. So far 16 of them have hatched, out of the original 45 (only 42 looked to have ever been fertile). Some of the remaining eggs look pretty close, but some are quite behind. It's a bit strange how they develop at such staggeringly different rates despite being laid at most only hours apart on the same day. Even with eggs on the same leaf, some have hatched and some have not. Anyway, we stuck the first six that hatched this morning onto willow (Salix), which will probably be our base host. By early afternoon, five more had hatched and we initially put them on our plum (Prunus) which we used as a host plant two years ago with two wild-caught larvae. Of all the host plant choices, willow and Prunus definitely seem to be the best for this species, especially in our region where it seems the ovipositing females have a strong preference for the two. Cherry would probably be superior to the plum, as it usually is with species that eat Prunus, but we don't have any of that. The problem with the plum is that we have a very limited supply of it (one tree) that doesn't seem to be doing very well. It has very little new growth (most of the leaves have been on the tree since March) and the leaves it does have are dry and covered in yellow speckles. We decided to be rash and still decided at first to try to use the plum as this is probably our only opportunity for a long time or forever, but after several hours and no feeding by the larva we gave in and put them and the five more newly hatched larvae onto the willow. Perhaps they would have started feeding on it later (quite likely, actually) but we didn't want to lose sight of the goal right now which is to get as many of them through as possible. We also suspected that the larvae would not take well to the plum since it took two months for the larvae two years ago to grow on it (during the same season, so leaf quality and temperatures were similar), which is abnormally long. The newborn larvae were surprisingly difficult to handle despite their relatively large size to other swallowtails (about 3 mm). Like anise (Papilio zelicaon), they make silken mats immediately after they finish eating their egg shell, making it hard to pull them off onto the new leaves. At this time, they thrash around violently and, although they don't stick out their horns (which are dark red at this stage) too much like the anise newborns, they sometimes regurgitate which is even worse. But once we can get them to settle down, hopefully this will actually be a very easy species to rear in bulk. ![]() Authors Brian Liang
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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 |