News That Stays News

What my caterpillars and I do all day July 6, 2013

The caterpillars eat, digest, excrete, and occasionally build new shelters, shed their old skins, or pupate. Or get eaten alive by parasitoid wasp or fly larvae from the inside out. Then they get up the next day and do it all over again.

My days are only a little less repetitive. After breakfast, I go out and collect between four and six caterpillars, which is the number I can comfortably process in two or three hours. Collecting the caterpillars can take as many as four or five hours, but often only two. I also have to collect new food for my captive caterpillars, some of whom can go through the leaves of a small plant in 24 hours.

Once I get back to the lab, I do the intake processing for my new caterpillars. This means that I take pictures of both them and their shelters and get them settled in Ziploc bags. I’m also collecting data on the quality of the plants the caterpillars are on, so I also weigh leaves from the plant (so that I can dry them out and determine how much water they had in them) and test how tough the leaves are. By the time I’m finished with this, it’s time for lunch.

The afternoon is spent taking care of the caterpillars I already have. This means feeding them, cleaning out their bags, collecting old shelters, and photographing any new shelters, new skins, or other interesting developments. This often takes four or five hours. When I’m done with that, I upload all the photographs to my computer and label them. Then I go to bed so that I can do it all over again.

If I’m lucky, I get to see some really cool things while I’m doing all this.  As soon as I figure out how to post it, I’ll put up a video of one.