#18, The Tree with Lots of Caterpillars


Hiiiiiiiii. It's been a long time since I posted anything.

Yes, finally something proper to post. Well, after a tiring day of school, I scooted off to the Clementi Woods to walk around, and guess what, I found a tree with many many caterpillars, all at 3 different instars. The three groups of caterpillars had varied sizes: small, medium and large. I also found about five abandoned pupas on the trees!
Some information about caterpillars
The caterpillars have huge appetites and can grow to as much as 10 times their original weight. This was really really evident because quite a fair bit of the branches on the trees were stripped of leaves. Apparently, this caterpillar species is herbivorous (which is typical of caterpillars). They have a high rate of ion intake from their guts which allows the caterpillar to efficiently absorb the nutrients from what they've ingested. Also, they usually have satae (the hair-like protrusions) which helps prevent themselves from being eaten as they can irritate the mucuous membranes of the predator.

Super cool! I will be back to check out on them... There are many many birds in the area, and boy, am surprised that there are that many caterpillars surviving. It's unfortunate I don't know the ID. Will see if I get to see the emerging butterfly on my trip back, I might then be able to ID something. If anyone knows, please do tell mee (: Meanwhile, just some photographs.
[EDIT] Thanks to Horace for ID, the butterfly for these caterpillars is the Painted Jezebel (Delias hyparete) [/EDIT]


The medium sized: they allllll were literally congregating on one leaf!


This is the larger-sized caterpillar

Thought this was quite cute. Awww they were all like busy chewing!

Photograph of the pupaaaaa

Another photograph of the pupa


This was the plant the caterpillars were found on...

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Tendrils coil around the plant; a form of parasitism.


Interesting trees with brooooownish thingums on it. Couldn't really tell what it was.




Oh and I think http://butterflycircle.blogspot.com/ is a great butterfly blog. Do visit it!

2 comments:

TS said...

Wa, nice captures~

The balls might be "tumours" caused by mistletoes growing on the tree.

Unknown said...

hehe ty.

icic... so the poor tree is diseased eh ):