caterpillars

The Caterpillars Who Ate Dessert First

~ shoreacres ~ 61 Comments

One of our prettiest Texas wildflowers is the Skeleton Plant (Lygodesmia texana), so-called because its leafless, oddly-angled stems resemble a collection of bones. It’s attractive to a wide variety of insects; in the flower below, a skipper sips nectar while a beetle — a Spotted Flower Buprestid (Acmaeodera ornata) — prepares to nibble on the ray florets.

In early May, Skeleton flowers blooming on the fringes of Cost, Texas were hosting innumerable caterpillars which might have belonged to the genus Pontia, since Checkered White butterflies (Pontia protodice) also were present. The caterpillars’ behavior seemed a little odd, so I began watching one of the creatures.

Rather than eating the plants’ basal leaves or stems, it made tracks for the flower heads, moving straight up the stem at quite a good clip. Once at the top, it peered into the flower, grabbed one of the stamens, and proceeded to munch. 

Caterpillar on a mission
Mission accomplished!

While I watched, it worked its way from one stamen to the next, seeming to enjoy the taste.

In ten minutes or so, it had consumed every one of the stamens. At that point, I expected it to begin eating the plant’s ray flowers. Instead, it turned, climbed back down the stem, and headed for another Skeleton Flower, where it repeated its climb to the top.

With at least three caterpillars engaging in the same behavior, I couldn’t help tasting one of the stamens. It wasn’t sweet as pie or ice cream, but it certainly wasn’t bitter; perhaps there was a bit of nectary sweetness that appealed to the insects.

Whatever the taste, I couldn’t help wondering if the caterpillars might have adopted the approach of some humans: life is short, so eat dessert first — and pity the poor ant who’s late to the table.

No more stamens ~ the pollen jar’s empty!

 

Comments always are welcome.

The Day It Rained Caterpillars

~ shoreacres ~ 71 Comments
Live Oak Tussock Moth ~ Orgyia detrita

Inchworms move more quickly than you might think. Intent on trying to photograph patterns on an especially tiny one trucking along a boardwalk at the San Bernard Wildlife Refuge, I assumed a twig had fallen into my hair, and brushed it off. Then, as I brushed away a second and third ‘twig,’ I realized they weren’t bits of a tree branch at all. They were caterpillars.

As the wind rose, the number of falling caterpillars increased, until the boardwalk was covered with them. In only a few hours, hundreds of them were crawling over plants, the decking — and me.

Eventually, I learned I’d encountered the Live Oak Tussock Moth (Orgyia detrita), a moth species whose life cycle coincides with the emergence of Coastal Live Oak leaves in spring. Quercus virginiana serves as their primary host plant, and emerging caterpillars may completely defoliate a tree, although wind-blown Tussock Moths may defoliate other small trees and shrubs; all of the oaks and other plants usually rebound without suffering permanent damage.

The caterpillars, named for the ‘tussocks,’ or tufts of hair on their back, are strikingly pretty. Those tufts are so striking that, when I spotted this caterpillar on Pete Hillman’s nature blog, I suspected his English caterpillar was related to the species I’d found in mid-April.

Vapourer or Rusty Tussock Moth ~ Orgyia antiqua

Indeed, it is. Known in the United Kingdom as the Vapourer, in the United States the non-native species is known as the Rusty Tussock Moth. Like our Live Oak Tussock Moth, the Vapourer feeds on a variety of broad-leaved trees and shrubs throughout woodlands, moorlands, valleys, and urban gardens from northern Scotland to the extreme southwest of Cornwall.

While the Vapourer shares the distinctive hair tufts of our Tussock Moth, its common name refers to the pheromones — the ‘vapours’ — that males follow to find females with which to mate.

The hairs of both species can be irritating to human skin, but there was nothing at all irritating about finding myself in the midst of a caterpillar ‘shower,’ or in the discovery that our native species has an equally attractive counterpart across the Atlantic.

Comments always are welcome.

No Building Permit Required

~ shoreacres ~ 64 Comments

 

While visiting the Attwater Prairie Chicken Refuge, I found this bit of complexity at the intersection of two trails.

Lincoln Logs hadn’t come to mind in years, but that’s exactly what the construction resembled: an oddly designed but well-built home made of tiny logs. In fact, it is a home: one belonging to a member of the Psychidae, or bagworm family. 

Bagworm moth caterpillars weave silk cocoons around themselves, and then reinforce the silk with bits of twigs, leaves, or stems. The construction materials determine the final appearance of the houses, which also are called ‘cases.’

Bagworm moth cases can be attached nearly anywhere; this one dangled from a substantial sunflower stalk. Oddly, the cases more closely resemble RVs than suburban homes; the caterpillars are mobile, carrying the case with them as they hunt for food. They feed from a hole in the top of the case, and expel waste from a smaller hole in its bottom.

Growing bagworms expand their home by adding more twigs, leaves, or stems. Emerging from the top of the case to collect building material, they cut it to size before attaching it to the top of the case.

Both males and females spend most of their lives living inside their cases as caterpillars. After pupation, females remain in the case, while males leave to seek females with which to mate. After mating, females lay their eggs in the old bag. Once the larvae have hatched, they leave the case, seeking a suitable spot to build their own home.

Whether Einstein ever found himself contemplating a bagworm case, I can’t say, but his words ring true as I contemplate this one:

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.

 

Comments always are welcome.

A Caterpillar and the Centipede’s Dilemma

~ shoreacres ~ 50 Comments
Saltmarsh caterpillar (Estigmene acrea)

After stopping for a closer look at the lemon beebalm (Monarda citriodora) overflowing a roadside ditch, I discovered a dozen or more saltmarsh caterpillars roaming among the flowers. Most were munching on leaves or moving along stems with what passes for caterpillar haste, but one had curled itself around a grass stem and seemed to be holding on for dear life.

For the ten minutes I was in its neighborhood, it never moved. It might have been resting, or pondering a drop down into the leaf litter to begin pupating, but it reminded me of this verse from childhood:

A centipede was happy – quite!
Until a toad in fun
Said, “Pray, which leg comes after which?”
It threw her mind in such a pitch
She laid bewildered in the ditch,
Considering how to run.

Even though the caterpillar lacks the numerous legs of a centipede, and despite the fact that its movement depends on muscle contraction rather than the legs it does have, it still amused me to imagine my little friend pondering the verse attributed to Katherine Craster in her 1871 volume called Pinafore Poems. Whenever I grew indecisive as a child, one parent or the other would recite the lines: a bit of cautionary advice to prevent dithering.

I assume the curled up caterpillar ceased any dithering and moved on eventually, but it pleased me that others of its kind were available for photos.

Salt marsh larvae are highly variable in color, ranging from yellow to brown or black, but whatever the color of their bodies or hairs, I find their little faces charming.

 

Comments always are welcome.

Some Friends for the Big Green Guy

~ shoreacres ~ 55 Comments
The Big Green Guy ~ photo by Steven Schwartzman

This little marvel munching away on a gaura leaf, clearly unwilling to interrupt his meal in order to tidy up for the camera, has been tentatively identified as the larva of a white-lined sphinx moth (Hyles lineata): the same moth I featured recently on The Task at Hand.

The first time I saw the creature, I dissolved into giggles and immediately dubbed him the Big Green Guy. His vulnerable chubbiness, his tiny, multi-purpose feet, his air of concentration, his apparent lack of embarassment at being revealed as a messy eater: all evoked a response of absurd protectiveness.

Unable to help myself, I emailed his image to friends. Despite mixed reviews, everyone recognized it as a caterpillar, although some less sensitive souls deemed it ‘just’ a caterpillar. “Yes,” I said. “It is a caterpillar. But it’s not just any caterpillar. It’s an Alice in Wonderland, ‘Let me look you in the eye and ask you some questions’ caterpillar.”

Eventually, I purchased and hung a print of the creature on my wall. A neighbor said, “You might as well have mounted a collection of cockroaches.” I considered her judgment unnecessarily harsh, and said so. “To each her own,” she said.

Over the months, I began to wonder why I never had found a caterpillar. I saw monarchs being raised here and there, and occasionally a friend would find a chrysalis hanging from a lawn chair or a shrub, but caterpillars of any sort evaded me.

Then, in late October of this year, I noticed yellow tape along a roadside, attached somewhat casually to stakes. Suspecting that someone might have marked a milkweed patch, I stopped to explore. When I did, I not only found milkweed plants, I found a group of monarch larvae happily feeding: as plump and adorable as the Big Green Guy.

This one appeared to be sampling a stem.

A second was making short work of what seemed to be an especially tasty plant. At the time, I didn’t notice what appears to be an empty chrysalis nearby.

Focused on eating as much milkweed as they could, as quickly as possible, the group clearly wasn’t interested in posing, but they provided a wonderful hour’s entertainment.

In a recent post on his Learn Fun Facts blog, Edmark M. Law offered this quotation from Charles Dickens’s 1850 novel, David Copperfield:

Indifference to all the actions and passions of mankind was not supposed to be such a distinguished quality at that time, I think.
Yet I have known it very fashionable indeed. I have seen it displayed with such success that I have encountered some fine ladies and gentlemen who might as well have been born caterpillars.

Dickens might have sought a different analogy, had he met the Big Green Guy and his friends.

Comments always are welcome.