CECROPIA SILKMOTH
One of the advantages of knowing a bit about insects is the series of love offerings that show up on my front porch or phone. The neighbor kids will leave me insect parts on my porch and ask for identification. Friends send me photos of mystery critters to identify. It keeps me on my toes. On rare occasion I can identify the insect without referring to a field guide and I do a little dance to celebrate my brilliance. Today’s mystery insect was not in my field guides, so I secretly resorted to google it as a “large green caterpillar with blue spots and yellow spines”. Through the magic of technology…. the cecropia silkmoth became known. Hyalophora cecropia moths lay their eggs on the leaves of trees such as the box elder, sugar maple, dogwoods and more. The eggs hatch and the caterpillars feed until they become large and in-charge. Or, at least rotund enough to have sufficient energy to pay the cost of metamorphosis and adulthood. When they achieve “ginormousness” in late autumn they spit up a silk cocoon and begin the process of reorganizing their bodies into flying adults. (Wait, so that silk shirt I bought is made of a cocoon formed from spit?) The adults will emerge in early summer. Curiously the adults do not feed, and do not even have a functional mouth. You must eat to live! So, it isn’t a surprise that the adults only survive up to two weeks. During that time, they must find a mate and reproduce. Well, with only two weeks to live, there isn’t a lot of time to visit Match.com so the female releases pheromones to attract a male. This pheromone must be powerful because it can attract a male a mile away. Males have silly looking large antennae which help them detect the “pheromones of love” (I just made that term up and I think it could be worthy of a commercial. Too bad insects do not watch commercials). Mating involves copulation. The female lays a number of eggs on the leaves of a suitable food tree and the circle of life continues (Cue Lion King soundtrack…)
Visit this website to view the range of the Cecropia moth and track its migration.
https://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species/Hyalophora-cecropia
Visit this video to see how silk is produced. Warning… it is referring to a different species of moth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77ktNSPFbwQ
