White-lined Sphinx Eggs Hatch

Our White-lined Sphinx (Hyles lineata) eggs have begun to hatch.

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We only just received our White-lined Sphinx eggs two days ago, and they wasn't a lot of visible developing yet as we as we could tell. Even yesterday, it didn't look like any of the 32 eggs were turning pharate yet. However, today we were very surprised to see that a single egg hatched this afternoon, and most of the other eggs looked quite pharate. Later, starting in the evening until midnight, 27 more hatched, leaving 4 eggs unhatched. Its interesting to note how this species' eggs are night hatchers rather than morning hatchers like most Lepidoptera we have reared. The single hatchlings are quite small-- about half the size of our Achemons. Their bodies are a pale yellow-green just like our newborn Achemons, but their head capsules are a muddy green color. Also, when examined very closely, there are two rows of black spots along the dorsal side of the abdomen. Their bodies are slender like most Sphinxes, though not quite as slender as other Sphinxes we have reared. The horn is very short and black unlike the Achemons' which are longer than their own body length at birth. 

Since the eggs unexpectedly hatched in the evening, we didn't create proper set-up yet and simply transferred all of them to a small petri dish and put in a grape (Vitis) leaf stuck in a water tube for now. This species can utilize a large variety of hosts, but feeding the the same plant as our Achemons makes rearing the two more convenient for us. So far, the White-lined Sphinx caterpillars haven't crawled off the grape leaf yet and stays still in a sphinx pose. There are no visible holes or fecal pellets yet, but we observed one that looked like it was feeding.

- Alan