The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Posted on August 22, 2012 by Ted C. MacRae

Feed me!

Spodoptera eridania (southern armyworm) | reared from lab colony on soybean

Copyright © Ted C. MacRae 2012

About Ted C. MacRae

Ted C. MacRae is a research entomologist by vocation and beetle taxonomist by avocation. Areas of expertise in the latter include worldwide jewel beetles (Buprestidae) and North American longhorned beetles (Cerambycidae). More recent work has focused on North American tiger beetles (Cicindelidae) and their distribution, ecology, and conservation.
This entry was posted in Lepidoptera, Noctuidae and tagged , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

6 Responses to The Very Hungry Caterpillar

  1. Vasha says:
    August 22, 2012 at 12:58 AM

    Are those ocelli just back of the mandibles, or is this caterpillar entirely blind?

    Reply
    • Ted C. MacRae says:
      August 22, 2012 at 9:15 AM

      Yes, those are ocelli. They don’t do much other than detect light/dark and movement—certainly not able to make out images to any degree.

      Reply
      • James C. Trager says:
        August 22, 2012 at 12:45 PM

        Ocelli, rather than the larval precursors of the compound eyes?

        Reply
        • Ted C. MacRae says:
          August 22, 2012 at 2:11 PM

          To be entirely correct, the “ocelli” of larval lepidopterans are more properly called stemmata and are, like most of the caterpillar body, “throw away” structures that are broken down during pupation. The resulting “soup” provides raw material for the imaginal discs, from which all adult body structures (incl. compound eyes) are built.

          Reply

Commentaria

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s