Hello readers,
Well fall is certainly here and I absolutely love it. Fall is my favorite season for a multitude of reasons: the leaves change color, the temp is perfect, Halloween and all that that entails is on its way, insects abound as the final days of summer wane...the list really just goes on and on.
To celebrate today (though the weather here is not very good), the two little pets I am currently keeping in my dorm room are doing well and undergoing their own seasonal changes. The first, a tobacco hornworm (
Manduca sexta) that I brought back with me from my genetics lab last Thursday is pupating! It's hard to believe that this was just a caterpillar a week ago.
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| Tobacco Hornworm caterpillar (M. sexta) |
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| My little pupa! The brown blob you see next to it is a shed skin. |
While commonly considered a pest species, this large caterpillar will turn into a large, beautiful moth come springtime.
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| Tobacco Hornworm Moth (M. sexta) |
I can't wait for this beauty to emerge! And besides having this occurring, I also now have a sowbug killer (
Dysdera crocata), also known as a woodlouse spider, that has just finished laying her eggs and is covering them with little pieces of debris that were either present in her container, or pieces that I threw in myself to observe. It has been a lot of fun to watch her pick up pieces of bark from a twig, or a larger piece of the twig itself that I broke off, and carry over and place it on the eggsac. Once the piece has been placed, the runs many strands of silk over it to hold it in place. She is doing her best to camouflage the eggsac from any predators that may come by. This also solves a mystery for me that I have been curious about for some time now. The eggsac of a woodlouse spider looks like the one in the photo below and can usually be found in the spring or summer very torn up and just a shred of what it used to be. The cool thing (and also the identifying feature!), are some strands that stick out to the sides for stability. They are difficult to see here, but if you look at the tip of her front right leg, you can see 3 or 4 sticking out.
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| Woodlouse Spider (D. crocata) and eggsac |
Fantastic day of change for my pets and cannot wait to see where it goes from here!
Keep your eyes open for the changes of fall everyone. Not just the changes in insects and arachnids. The changes of nature.
Bug
