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Caterpillar Hunt - Saturday May 16, 2009 |
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John also brought along some additional samples of Geometrids he collected the day before, including the Half-Wing moth caterpillar (Phigalia titea), an excellent stick mimic. It feeds only on the newest foliage, and will starve if provided only with mature leaves.
Another type of caterpillar we found was this Oak Leafroller, a member of the Tortricid family of micro-moths. These caterpillars hide themselves in the daytime in leaves either rolled-up or webbed together with silk.
One larva we found was neither moth nor butterfly, but the caterpillar-like larva
of a green oak sawfly (Hymenoptera: Symphyta). Sawfly larva have more prolegs than do butterfly and moth caterpillars.
Photos by Michael Wilpers and Ed Murtagh. Insect identification by John Lill, who also edited the text. Text compiled by Michael Wilpers, drawn in part from David L. Wagner, Caterpillars of Eastern North America (Princeton, 2005) and E. R. Eaton and Kaufman, Kaufman Field Guide to the Insects of North America (Houghton Mifflin, 2007).
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