Ant predation interrupts the Eastern Black Swallowtail life cycle.
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June 2016
It was my favorite caterpillar. After waiting and waiting for the first sighting of the year, I spotted three on the parsley by my porch. They were recently featured in this Daily Bucket on June 5th.
Guess I missed the tiny, fuzzy black, early stage of metamorphose but 3 on 1 flower was cool. That was back when they didn't eat much, or shuffle along the stems very far.
The caterpillar I write about today is the bigger of these. It’s on the lower right going back to center after eating an umbelet. The other 2 are headed out to get a meal. My guy was always ahead of its cohorts — even has its own gif.
A week later, June 12, there are 2 caterpillars. The 3rd may have crossed the deck to greener parsley. #1 is still bigger than the other - big enough to center a flower stem in its mouth and slide down, ingesting as it goes. I'm still amazed it could do this (see cover photo also) and end up with all its bulky weight balanced on its mouth and front legs.
And another week later, on the 19th, I took this photo of #1 in chrysalis and #2 still a caterpillar. The chrysalis is about 1.5 inches, light green at this stage and blends in with parsley.
A few days later I noticed the color changing, darkening, and peering in, I could see colors that look like its eventual wing spots. The pupa is attached to the parsley in 2 places, the tail and a thread around the middle. Sure is pretty...
and that evening, 11 hours later, I’m walking by and glance over to see another color change.
Looking closer — a trail of ants that are rapidly plundering. I’m curious if this is normal for ants to attack a chrysalis, or perhaps it was dead from something else and the ants are cleaning up.
The next day, only a shell…
And that was that, this guy’s life is over in 30 days. I probably spent 20-30 hours looking at it, hovering, photographing, propping up waist-high parsley, wondering and waiting to see what’s next.
Here’s some more Black Swallowtail photos showing the rest of its life cycle -- from my hundreds of nature photos in the DK Image Library:
So there you are — the end of my entertaining caterpillar. I read most eggs do not make it to adult butterfly, even those that hatch, become caterpillars, and maybe pupate. And so it goes with nature but since I have parsley all around all year with a dozen caterpillars chomping thru right now, there will be more butterflies. Ya never know, global warming may put the poor winter emergent at the right time.
Well that’s it for this bucket. Thanks for gathering around to mark the end of this butterfly’s cycle. Anything cool happening in nature near you?
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