To our surprise, our Polyphemus Moth (Antheraea polyphemus) eggs have hatched today, just a day after we received them. Well, this is some very exciting yet surprising news. At noon today when we checked on the Polyphemus Moth eggs that we had just received in the mail yesterday, we were delightedly surprised to find a whole gang of newly born caterpillars crawling around their eggshells in the petri dish. We counted 21 in total, with one just making its way out of its shell, though four more hatched a few hours later making 25 hatchlings for today with 14 unhatched eggs remaining. We were extremely surprised that they hatched today because we had literally received the eggs yesterday and assumed they were freshly laid and would hatch next week. But since they hatched today, this means the eggs must have been oviposited over a week ago and we were very lucky none hatched during shipping. The Polyphemus caterpillar hatchlings are yellowish white with huge brown head capsules. Along the entire body are very small but hairy yellow tubercles on each segment, arranged in the same way as other Silkmoth caterpillars such as Cecropia and Luna. In addition, each body segment has two black lines that run along the sides of the bases of the tubercles. After the caterpillars hatched, a few ate parts of their eggs shells but most didn't and wandered around the dish. Like most Saturniidae, they shouldn't actually settle down and begin feeding on foliage until around dusk, so we had some time to figure out what rearing method to use and find leaves. As discussed on yesterday's post, we wanted to try using either the native Coast Live Oak (Quercus agrifolia) which is extremely common here or the the few landscape deciduous oak species). Before we weren't quite sure what to use because agrifolia is abundant but has tough small leaves, while the red oak group of oaks are broad and smooth leaved but are very few and require us to walk quite a distance just to pick some leaves. However, when we took a walk around the city to look for oaks, we realized the live oak leaves were simply just unusable looking- they were so small, hard and prickly enough to pierce skin. Instead, we found a spot with three decently sized landscape oak trees that we later identified as scarlet oaks (Quercus coccinea) that had nice low branches for picking with pretty good condition leaves. We cut a small branch from it and headed to another location with a landscape oak tree. This oak was huge but with plenty of reachable branches that we later identified as pin oak (Quercus palustris). The leaves were broad and glossy and were in excellent condition, so we took a small branch from it as well to see which oak the Polyphemus would prefer. When we got home, we decided to use six large petri dishes for the 25 caterpillars, with five dishes of four and one dish of five. This is a different method from what we used for the other Saturniids we have raised where we used air tight plastic tubs, because we don't think the extra humidity is necessary; it'll just instigate disease and as long as the leaves are fresh enough the caterpillars shouldn't desiccate. We placed a pin oak leaf in four dishes and a scarlet oak leaf in the other two and stuck the petioles into a small tubes filled with water with a hole poked at the top in order to keep the leaves fresh. One of the pin oak dishes is the one dish of five caterpillars. At night (10:00 PM) we took a brief check on the caterpillars to see if they had begun feeding and noticed that in the four pin oak dishes there were a few holes made by a few caterpillars but most of them hadn't settled down yet and were wandering all over the dish. On the other hand, every single one of the caterpillars in the two scarlet oak dishes were settled peacefully on the leaf and there were a few nibbles on the sides of the leaves. From this it appears they have a preference for the scarlet oak, so we actually took out the pin oak leaf from one of the pin oak dishes and replaced it with a scarlet oak leaf. We well see tomorrow how much feeding there will be on the leaves. - Alan
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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 |