Monthly Archives: September 2011
Reaction
It appears that many caterpillars within Acronicta are mimics of other caterpillars. These relationships have yet to be investigated beyond comparing superficial resemblances. This is something I hope to tackle with my own research.
For now I’m still raising some caterpillars for general life history data, waiting for them to pupate so I can get on with my life and have a little break from cleaning frass until the spring.
One species in my care is Acronicta impleta. It is supposed that this species mimics caterpillars in the family Lymantriidae. They have very similar tufts and coloration. Here is A. impleta
trying to look a lot like a Dasychira species
(image from BugGuide)
Many lymantriid caterpillars sting, so they would be a good group to mimic. Just look at all those nasty spines and tufts. A. impleta also has some other color variations, including a predominantly orange morph.
According to my advisor, A. impleta is most likely a harmless Batesian mimic. But today, while cleaning their containers, one brushed against my hand. It stung a little bit.
So being curious, I rubbed it against the back of my hand. AHHHHH!!!!
My skin turned red, I started getting little white spots around the sting site, and the reaction spread across the rest of my hand. It all had a low burning sensation, and lasted for about an hour (even after applying benadryl cream)
I asked my advisor and some fellow students to experiment on themselves, and while they happily obliged, none of them reacted. Perhaps I am just extra sensitive to this species or the physical hairs themselves? Or is there something chemical going on here? I would love to test this! Perhaps it is Mullerian mimicry and not Batesian if the A. impleta are themselves protected?
That was my excitement for the day.
I’m not very good at this
I’m not very good at relaxing. At least, not in the way that most other people do.
I don’t really like sitting still. I can’t watch tv without doing something else at the same time.
I hate board games like Monopoly because they take forever and are so irritatingly dull. Unless, of course, I’ve got a knitting project I can work on at the same time. I don’t play games, I watch movies rarely, and I feel guilty if I spend too long browsing the internet without actually doing something.
When I was a kid my dad used to always say “do something constructive”, and I think that stuck (I was in a rush and didn’t realize I had typed the wrong word… thanks to my dad for pointing it out in the comments!)
For me, sewing is relaxing. Or working out. Or weeding the garden, or cooking, or taking care of my pets. I have to be doing something with my hands, moving around. It helps if there is an end product I can feel good about. A stuffed animal, sore muscles, dinner, etc. This is why I get really antsy at parties – people want to just stand around and drink and talk. I can only handle that for so long… let’s go do something!
So anyway, here is some pretty water flowing through Cave Creek for those of you who are actually capable of sitting down and relaxing once in a while. Some people could sit and watch the water. I had to go poke around for bugs and collect rocks.
Eumorpha typhon
Do you ever see something and just have no idea how to react? You start to utter jumbled syllables, unsure of what you’re feeling or how to express it? Awe? Shock? Wonder? Attraction? Revulsion? Love? Panic?
That’s how I felt when I saw this caterpillar.
How is this possible? How is this even real?
What’s with the bright colors and spots? And that ridiculously smooshed face?
I know I shouldn’t be surprised by things like this, but I always am. Caterpillars have such an amazing array of coloration, defenses, postures, patterns, shapes and sizes – there is always something new to discover.
This big guy is Eumorpha typhon, in the family Sphingidae. It will turn into a beautiful moth one day.
Arizona sky
One thing I miss about Arizona is the beautiful scenery.
On this day we had lightning, rain, clouds, rainbows, sunny blue skies… all at once.
Moth crafting
Remember how we had those giant piles of moths at the Lep Course when we were sorting? Well… not all of them were kept as specimens. There were plenty of leftover Matigramma moths, so I decided it was craft time.
I carefully cut off their wings and glued them to a piece of cardboard I cut in the shape of a moth. The wings are all from the Matigramma species, while the body was from the wings of a species of geometrid. 
I have a few boxes of abandoned specimens in my office from various sources… if I have time I might try some more moth wing crafting.
Moth sorting
If you are interested in ecology or doing some sort of faunistic inventory, you might want to set out a bucket light trap to collect moths. Something like one of these:
That sounds great, right? Black lights, panels and funnels leading into a bucket of alcohol fumes… just set it outside and collect in the morning.
Then you are faced with something like this…
This photo only shows about 1/3 of the pile, though. From one trap.
Let’s go in for a close up.
If you have never reached your hand into a pile of moths… it is surreal. They are so soft and slippery, it is a very discomforting sensation. And did I mention sometimes they are not sufficiently dead and start fluttering around? It was strange.
So, yes, now you have your moths and need to sort them. That was one of our exercises at the Lep Course: trying to sort big piles of moths to family level. It is a task a few of the instructors performed every day, but as a class we only spent one long morning sorting. I think it would have been fun to do a sort at the start of the week and again at the end, to see how we improved!
We mostly found noctuids, geos, sphingids, notodontids, and various microlep families. We sorted them into piles, and divided out some of the species we recognized. There was one noctuid genus in particular, Matigramma, which dominated the catch. The easiest to sort were the sphingids, which look more like fighter airplanes than insects.
And here I am, hard at work. My allergies were terrible that week, so I wore my glasses most of the time.
I don’t think I would get into ecology simply for the sheer number of specimens I would have to work with. I love sorting and pinning, but I have other things to do, too. I did an ecological study as an undergrad, about beetles in the canopy and understory of Quebec forests. I sorted almost 10,000 specimens to family, and a few thousand of those to species. I hope to get that work published eventually. But yeah, I got a taste of that world, I wouldn’t want to do that for a few years solid! Of course, raising caterpillars isn’t exactly easy. Have to pick my battles.
caterpillarblog 