I have seen some of his videos too. I think most people only spend a few minutes spreading a specimen. Sometimes, that’s out of necessity because of the sheer volume of specimens one has to deal with. I only add a few specimens a year to my collection because they are essentially all reared. And sin...

I was in contact will Bill last year. He seemed as active as ever. He has a supplier network in Canada and the USA but doesn’t ship across the border for obvious reasons. Give him a shout. I have a bunch of cecropia and promethea cocoons in the garage but I believe you are in the US?

Here are the first instar larvae

All these female specimens and yet no one has taken the time to get eggs and rear. We still don’t know the life history of this species, which isn’t even that rare.

You are thinking of Mr. R. Skalski.

Papilio ponceana is the new name. Also, is P. indra kaibabensis protected?

Also worth mentioning is that the larvae of pilumnus, troilus, and palamedes are similar. They also all primarily feed on Lauraceae as caterpillars. Papilio pilumnus uses Litsea.

Taiwan

Yes I agree, different species have different tendencies to travel. Like mentioned earlier, some species crawl off the host plant but others pupate or spin cocoons on the host and hardly move.

But it still travels some more, so there is no set distance. If you took 10 caterpillars and they were clones, there is no way they would all travel exactly the same distance. Mayne one travel during a hot day and another during a rainy cool day. There are many factors. The distance is not going to ...

I don’t think the distance is set. If a larva is making a cocoon, and you take it and move it somewhere, it doesn’t crawl that same distance all over all. If crawls a much shorter distance and makes a second cocoon much sooner because it’s running out of time.

Yes, there are many factors, not just the ones I mentioned. Body size certainly counts. All of this is to say that distance is highly variable but some species can crawl many meters (double digits) to pupate.

I have raised numerous species and how much time the larva spends wandering is species dependent. If you assume caterpillars crawl 1 cm every 3 seconds and they crawl for 6 hours, then you are looking at 72 meters. Of course, they don’t crawl in a straight line, sometimes they double back, and the c...

You must be talking about me lol. There are also a couple of records from northern MI (probably same individual) and Point Pelee in Ontario. It’s not that it can’t survive here due to the winters, it’s mainly lack of pawpaw. Historically, marcellus was a resident breeder in Ontario before 99% of the...

Agree with Chuck. It would be a nice way of honoring his legacy and memory to ensure his work is not lost.

Are we sure those are joanae in the pictures? The paper I linked above says joanae and polyxenes are indistinguishable by morphology alone. Certainly, the eyespot does not match any of the 4 type specimens.

Interesting section on joanae:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/artic ... ne.0141882

Looks like polyxenes. I have seen specimens where the yellow/orange ring is thin and slightly incomplete and the pupil is relatively large. However, the pupil would still be circular. In contrast, the pupil in joanae is a bit flat and the long axis of the ellipsoid is horizontal.

No, but awesome that Actias luna is a butterfly.