Samia ricini Eggs Hatch

Our Samia ricini eggs have begun to hatch. This is our newer strain, obtained just days ago.

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We received a new strain of Samia ricini eggs about a week ago and now they've all begun to hatch. So far there are about two dozen, but they'll probably all be out by the end of the week. The neonate larvae began aggregating immediately after hatching as this species is highly gregarious in the early instars. The larvae are a pale yellow with small but hairy rows of black scoli, dorsally, sub-dorsally, and laterally. The thoracic plate and head capsule are large and shiny black. There are diamond-shaped or circular black markings between the scoli. They resemble the yellow second instar larva of Hyalophora cecropia and the young yellow larva of Eupackardia calleta.

As it is early in the season and host plants are of extremely high quality and abundance, we now have a huge selection of hosts unlike the previous two times we reared this species. Though Ricinus communis would be the best host, we don't have any around here, but we have many good alternative hosts. We set up a petri dish and got some water tubes and stuck four leaves in them: oval-leafed privet (Ligustrum ovalifolium), cherry plum (Prunus cerasifera), apple (Malus sp.) and maple (Acer sp). The best alternatives are usually from the Oleaceae (olive family) and Rosaceae (rose family), which the first three are members of. Of the four, we have only used Prunus cerasifera with our older strain in late summer of 2016. However, we look forward to trying out a variety of new hosts with the new strain as we'll have over a thousand larvae this time. So far, the larvae have nibbled on all four hosts, especially the privet. 

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Authors
Alan Liang

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