Epiphora lugardi

[kevinkk]

At long last, after at least 13 months I have an adult female, having hatched last night.
An interesting development, I brought the cocoons back into the warm room about 2 months ago,
and after reading a similar post on the Actias site, decided to renew the effort, cycling the heater
and humidifier the last couple days.
The cage I use for climate control, you can see is plastic, I have a small wall heater and the humidifier
to increase moisture and heat. Apparently something worked, or perhaps it's just time.
Now, I can leave (probably) her for a few days before the specimen has a risk of flight damage.

Epiphora lugardi female 1-12-25.JPG (58.33 KiB) Viewed 549 times

[Chuck]

Well done! You must be excited after such an effort.

[kevinkk]

Well done! You must be excited after such an effort.

Chuck, I am excited about it. After I made the post, I was thinking that there is a particular feeling of accomplishment having the effort bring some results, now, it may be simply providing the right conditions, or just luck, sometimes, it seems both work equally well, or not.
Right now, I have the female in a cooler room in a separate cage and it remains to be seen if a male will hatch in the window of
opportunity.
A beautiful animal, looking much like our Hyalophora, or Rothschildia.

Sometimes we try and replicate native conditions to give the insects the best chance, sometimes it works, even this last season, I had some
Citheronia splendens pupa which I'd raised from ova, overwintered them, and while all hatched, there weren't any matings , however,
a buyer who bought only 3 pupa, 2 females and 1 male, had a pairing, there's a lottery win right there.
Just getting a pairing is only part of the process, fertile ova, and accepted food plant, assuming it's available considering our seasonal changes.