Eastern Black Swallowtail

Eastern Black Swallowtail
One of my many hobbies is raising butterflies so when my 3rd instar caterpillar shed its skin my curiosity got the better of me. Eastern Black swallowtails hatch from tiny yellow eggs. The eggs are often on the front or back of the host plant. They eat parsley, Queen Anne's Lace,cilantro,fennel and dill. It takes about 2 weeks for them to enclose and another 2 weeks to actually be able to fly.  This can take up to 18 months however. Males are black and yellow and females are black and blue. The males also have claspers that they use to hold onto the female during mating. They have a special organ called an osmeterium to scare predators. They also produce poison to kill birds that try to eat them.

Inchworm

 

Inchworms are the larvae of Geometridae Moths. They are about 1 in long and make an inching/undulating movement since they have no legs in the middle. Which is how they get there name. There are about 1,200 types of moths in the Geometridae family. They have 3 pairs of true legs in the front of their body but only 2 prolegs. There bodies are hairless and they often have projections for camouflage and when bothered stand up to resemble the plant they are on. The majority of them are nocturnal and are attracted by light however there are exceptions. Seen in this picture is the digestive tract of an inchworm at 10x objective