A couple of months ago, a fellow MOSI staff member brought us a gorgeous moth she’d found in her yard. It turned out to be a female Imperial Moth (Eacles imperialis), and to our great delight, she eventually laid us some fertilized eggs. Within a few weeks, they had hatched, providing us with about 50 tiny Imperial moth larvae to raise. In their first instar, they were small and orange with fascinating branched setae all over their bodies.
Fast-forward about six weeks… after gorging themselves on Longleaf Pine (Pinus palustris) day after day, our tiny little caterpillars were now enormous monsters, 4- 5 inches in length and bigger around than a thumb. Their pine-scented frass filled the bottom of their tanks (they are possibly the most pleasant-smelling caterpillars we’ve raised in awhile!) as they stripped the needles from large branches in no time at all.
In the wild, Imperial Moth caterpillars climb down from trees and pupate in the leaf litter, so here in the lab we provide a box of leaf litter for them. When the larva are ready to make the transition to cocoon, they stop eating and begin to expel all the extra moisture from their bodies. They shrink down to perhaps a quarter of their size as full-grown caterpillars, growing stiff and nearly motionless. Finally, they shed their skin one last time and become pupae, a bright reddish color at first changing to a darker color as the pupa hardens.
Now that they’ve all gone to cocoon, it will likely be many months before we see them again. Even in Florida, Imperial Moths raise only one brood a year. As members of the silkmoth family, adult moths have no mouth parts and do not eat. When they emerge from cocoon next summer, they will have just a few days to mate and then lay eggs (the females, at least). We will keep the cocoons safely in the lab until then, so when they do emerge, with any luck we’ll be able to gather more eggs and raise another set of these amazing creatures.
For information on the adult Imperial Moths, including pictures, click here to read a previous post.
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