Last Monday the Hickory Horned Devil larva stopped eating. That told me that they were ready to rest in preparation to pupate. I figured it would take about a week based on the notes I made last time I studied them. I need to mention here that we left for Michigan the first week of August and my mom and brother, left with implicit instructions, cared for them while we were gone. We originally started with 14 larva but we released 10 of them into their native habitat prior to our trip. The first one started the process of pupation last night. Here's a pictorial of what's happened in the past week.
Full grown HHD
Full grown at just over 5 inches in length
The larva begins to change colors and burrows itself into the ground...
Once in the ground the larva rests there for about a week...
When it is ready to pupate it resurfaces. As you can see it has reduced its size by about 3 inches while resting.
It starts another color change...
Molts its exoskeleton and continues to turn color...
The exoskeleton
And finally forms a pupa which rests on the surface until next spring when it will hatch into a Royal Walnut moth. The pupa is capable of wiggling and will respond to sound and moisture when drops of water are added near by.
This is another one of the larva which began to resurface this morning. It will probably pupate this evening into morning.
3 comments:
Such a wonderfully detailed study of the HHD!!! Following the final act of emerging as the Royal Walnut Moth would you ever considered submitting your work to one of the online reference resources?
FABULOUS JOB!!!!!!!
I'm loving this. So the pupa is about 2.5" long, then?
And in the wild, it would lie on top of the ground - in grass or leaf litter?
Fascinating! I wonder why they come back up to the surface? It would seem like they would make a tasty snack for something (not me!), all helpless, just lying there.
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