The (biological) clock is ticking!

June 22, 2019  •  Leave a Comment

Regular reader(s?) of this blog website may know I found a lovely Puss moth caterpillar in our garden, early last July (on 5th July to be exact).

Admittedly this was quite early for a thirty day (roughly) old Puss moth caterpillar to be found wandering around looking for a place to pupate, as it will have hatched from its egg thirty days previously (around the 5th June) and been inside the egg on a poplar leaf for a couple of weeks before that - so will have been laid as an egg by its mother around the 22nd May.

You may also remember that I gave this caterpillar a nice bit of wood to pupate on, which it duly did - and its been residing in our empty chicken run since then.

I expected it to "eclose" forty or so days ago - in mid May - but it was only two nights ago now, around 1am on 22nd June that it finally broke out of its pupal case as a fully winged adult puss moth. (I check the pupa each morning and yesterday morning I found the below).

This puss moth adult will probably only live for a couple of months tops (if its not eaten by one of the bats that use our garden as their supermarket) - but it need to get its clogs on if it wants to breed (and ALL animals want to breed - it is after all the whole point of their lives).

If it manages to find a mate in one month say, the next generation will be laid as eggs on or around the 23rd July.

Two weeks to hatch makes that date 6th August.

Thirty days of caterpillar development makes pupation date 5th September.

And remember, pupation date last year for the moth I found was the 5th JULY!

 

No... my puss moth that "eclosed" two nights ago and flew orf into the big night sky as an adult puss moth simply does not have that time to find a mate and produce the next generation.

It's already between forty and fifty days (ish) LATER this year in its life cycle than last year and a good twenty or thirty days later than an "average" year I'd suggest.

It doesn't have a month to find a mate and produce the next generation as 5th September is TOO LATE for Puss moths to pupate. Probably.

My Puss moth needs to find a mate in the next week or two.

It really needs to get going NOW!

 

Footnote.

Some may be reading this thinking "well... that's a measure of just how bad the weather has been this year". But they'd be wrong.

My puss moth from last year did pupate early for sure - and that's more of a measure of just how good the weather was last year, but the weather this year here, especially in May, which is when my Puss moth should have emerged from its cocoon as an adult, was very nice and settled. It's only really been the last fortnight here that it has been wet and miserable.

So no... the wet weather in mid June here had nothing to do with the late eclosure of my Puss moth.

Perhaps it just wanted a long lie in.

The lazy get.

And now... NOWWWW... it's got to desperately make that time up.

Instead of a month or two to find a mate and produce eggs... it has a week or two. Tops.

The (biological) clock is ticking!

 

 

 


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