Western Giant Swallowtail Pupae Arrive

Today we received eight western giant swallowtail (Papilio rumiko) pupae from Southern California.

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The western giant swallowtail (Papilio rumiko) is evidently a very recent arrival to California based on the records. Now it seems to be one of the most common things flying in some parts of Southern California and is allegedly creeping its way into Central California. Perhaps one day it will make its way all the way up here if we all plant some more citrus trees (Citrus) because, as far as we know, their native Rutaceae hosts don't actually grow here. 

So despite how easy it apparently is to find these in the wild now down south and how "worthless" it would probably become if we lived down there, right now it is still seems like an incredible opportunity to us to even lay our eyes on them. Today we received eight pupae (presumably formed by larvae or eggs found in the wild) from the Los Angeles area. Unfortunately, one was dead and another severely deformed so we are already down to six, but on the bright side it appeared that they were both females and if our sexing is correct, there were three males and five females to begin with. All of the pupae are very light, light grey morphs with a tinge of green. 

Although they looked humongous (much larger than even the largest P. zelicaon but smaller than large Battus philenor hirsuta), their weights -- 1.1, 1.2, 1.2, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.4 g -- were actually not that impressive. With this small sample size, which should still be fairly representative, it is hard to say exactly where they fall on the chart but somewhere between P. zelicaon and P. rutulus is where it looks to be right now. ​But perhaps they are midway to eclosion already and have already dropped 0.1-2 g. 

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Authors
Brian Liang

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