I'm finding interesting insects as I go back through my collection vials and inserting the final labels. The vials include a bunch of organisms I've collected over the years, and one in particular I just processed brought back some memories.
This is a pretty caterpillar called Leucostigma orgyia, more commonly known as the white-marked tussock moth. I picked it off a tree during the summer of 2010 and took it home to raise into a beautiful moth, as this was around the time my interest in insects was really starting to increase.
Things didn't quite go as planned.
My caterpillar friend had been parasitized! As I came to learn later, this is a pretty common occurrence, but this was the first time I had witnessed it. I cover parasitoidism in this post, but the short version is that a small wasp (in the family Braconidae) had found this caterpillar and injected some eggs into it, which later hatched and found on the insides of the caterpillar. Once the wasp larvae had their fill, they burst out of the caterpillar's body, as you can see in the above picture.
The larvae then spin their cocoons on the caterpillar's body (the caterpillar is alive for part of this process), and after a few weeks, they emerge as adults and fly away. It can be gruesome to watch, especially considering how many wasps emerged: more than 50 in this case.
The above picture shows one of the adult males, magnified under a microscope. In their normal life cycle, they would fly off in search of females to mate with to restart the cycle anew. A bit violent, but it's a great population control mechanism.
For parasitoidism being as gruesome as it is, the following video is surprisingly cute. I'll attribute that to the soundtrack. It also doesn't hurt that these wasps are parasitizing the eggs of an invasive stink bug, Halyomorpha halys, the brown marmorated stink bug.
Parasitoidism was one of the first really neat events I learned about early on in my Entomology studies that got me hooked on insects. It's the process by which an insect (such as a wasp or a fly) lays an egg on or in another organism. That egg then hatches, the larvae feast on the innards of the poor host, and then burst out of its body, killing it. The end result can be gruesome, but today's Science Video Friday showcases the (relatively) peaceful start of the process: when the parasitoid lays its egg in the victim.
When I first started to become interested in insects two summers ago, I had a lot of inspiration thanks to the Catalpa trees in my backyard. I've always loved Catalpas: their flowers bloom starting in June and are spectacularly beautiful. They also smell really great.
One of the insects that can be found on Catalpa is the Catalpa Hornworm (Ceratomia catalpae). This caterpillar in the family Sphingidae can grow quite large (~3 inches) and goes through boom and bust cycles. During the summer of 2010, it was definitely a boom year for this caterpillar, which provided me with ample specimens.
There are also ample caterpillars for parasitoids to have a field day. Braconid wasps are especially prevalent, resulting in many of the caterpillars dying as they become vessels for broods of wasps.
Here you can see a Braconid wasp crawling on the cocoons.
This was a common sight, so I got used to seeing it after a few days. But once I found one that looked dramatically different (even from the cocooned ones), I took notice.
Yeah, I'd say that is dramatically different.
So....what happened? Good question! This guy lost the lottery in a spectacular way. He just exploded and that was that. Obviously, this is not like the parasitoidism of the Braconid wasps. If I were to venture a guess, I would blame a parasitoid fly maggot bursting out of the body: you can see a trail of liquid that comes out of the caterpillar's body and curves down by its head that looks like it could have been made by a maggot dragging itself along the leaf.
I haven't researched fly parasitoidism enough to put too much confidence behind that hypothesis, however. It also could have been a bird or other predator that decided to have a little snack, but wanted to leave a warning for the other caterpillars.
I would love to have the answer to the question, so I'll have to check for more caterpillars this summer. Maybe if I'm lucky, I'll find a maggot this time around, or see something else that explains it.
I'm currently in a scientific imaging class so that I can learn how to take better insect pictures and use Photoshop. Some of the assignments are a bit bland, so I've been trying to spice them up a bit. Yesterday's assignment was to create a flow chart of....anything. With that free reign, I decided to tackle parasitoids and the tobacco hornworm (Manduca sexta). After 20 minutes of a Twitter back and forth with Morgan Jackson and Crystal Ernst, I had a name for my subject: Randy. He had two paths to go down during his life--the choice was up to him.
I recently had the amazing opportunity to visit La Selva Biological Station, operated by the Organization for Tropical Studies, on a class trip. The station was established in 1971, and is one of the most important biological stations for tropical rain forest research in the world: every year 250 scientific papers are published from research done at the station. Pretty impressive for a station only 15 square kilometers in area. It's operated by a consortium of 63 universities, and they do a great job of managing it.
Unfortunately, due to the massive amount of pictures I took while there, I can only select a few to elaborate on, so I'll make those count. Let it be said, however, that there are a massive amount of interactions, plants, animals, and so many other organisms at the station, and in the rain forest as a whole. It's no wonder that so much research comes out of the place.
Bridge over Río Puerto Viejo, containing crocodiles and fruit-eating piranha.
I had a lot of time to explore (yet, not enough), so I took full advantage of that. I found a lot of birds: hummingbirds, toucans, huge birds that reminded me of turkeys, and others that reminded me of a raptor from Jurassic Park. I have yet to identify them, but I'm pretty sure they weren't dinosaurs. (Unless you agree with the people who think that birds are in fact dinosaurs, according to systematics. And I do. So more accurately, they weren't scaly dinosaurs that I would have to worry about hiding in tall grass.) One of my favorite birds I saw was a Cherrie's Tanager (Ramphocelus costaricensis). When resting on a branch, it looks like a black bird with pretty red feathers near its tail, but when it takes flight, it's an unexpected explosion of red and quite beautiful.
Of course, Biology isn't all about birds. Almost everywhere you looked, there were epiphytes on the trees. Epiphytes are simply plants which grow on top of other plants. Mosses and lichens? Sure. (Lichens aren't technically plants, but you get the idea. Something growing on something else.) In the rain forest, you get even more variety with epiphytes. Many species of bromeliads (some more than six feet across, depending on how large the tree is) and orchids are epiphytes, and they were abundant. Bromeliads have a central tank in which water is stored, and these tanks are ecosystems in their own right. While at La Selva, I found katydids, mosquito larvae, spiders (More like Shelob than Charlotte. Seriously, that thing erupted from a small bromeliad and was a monster--as big as my palm.), and more hanging out in the tanks. Some species of frogs even use them as nurseries for their young. The eighth episode of Planet Earth, "Jungles," shows the relationship between species living in a pitcher plant, and it's the same concept, very neat.
That's a lot of bromeliads.
One of the most exciting things I found in La Selva was also one of the smallest. It's also an example of why you need to take the time to slow down and examine the things around you, rather than running around only looking for the big organisms. Upon looking at the underside of a leaf (I believe it was a species of Heliconia), I found a small ant. It wasn't a normal ant, however. It was stuck to the leaf, obviously dead, and had something growing out of its head. Looking closely, I was astonished to find that it was a fungus! Its fruiting body, a small mushroom, was growing out of its head, and another stalk was growing from its abdomen.
It was one of the most exciting things I've ever seen. And thanks to Planet Earth, I knew what it was. Also in the "Jungles" episode, Sir David Attenborough talks about a particular type of fungus, of the genus Cordyceps. This fungus is an endoparasite (a parasite that lives inside of another organism), and it has a unique way of carrying out its life cycle. It infects a host, then sends out its mycelia (think of those as the roots of the fungus), which eventually replace the host's own tissue. Some species are able to change the host's behavior (zombie ants!), causing it to climb to a high leaf or branch and attach itself there. After the host has died, the fruiting body of the fungus (its stalk and mushroom) grows from the dead host and releases its spores, which land in different places around the forest, waiting for the next unfortunate host to step on them and get infected, to continue the circle of life. If that's not beautiful, then I don't know what is. Parasitism at its finest. Though really, it's more like parasitoidism.
Note: While I'm not entirely sure that the fungus is in the genus Cordyceps, it's the assumption I will go by until I find conflicting information. Disclaimer: I could be entirely wrong on the identification, but the process of fungal infection is most likely the same.
The segment of Planet Earth with the Cordyceps interaction can be viewed below:
Venturing forth across the bridge, I found even more. Spiders of many sizes and colors (with some neat webs), moths, a cockroach, katydids, fungi (just taking part in detrivory, not parasitoidism this time), metallic flies, many mating millipedes (actually, almost every millipede I saw was mating...), and a peccary (think wild pig). In addition to this, I had an encounter with a poison-dart frog. In this case, the blue jeans morph of the strawberry poison-dart frog (Oophaga pumilio). This one is the most toxic species in its genus, but isn't the most poisonous of the poison-dart frogs. Still, I didn't touch it. It probably wouldn't have appreciated it anyway.
I assume you now realize why it's called the blue jeans morph.
This trip being part of a Tropical Ecology class, I had a hike with a guide next, which was pretty sweet. Slight interjection: the food at La Selva is top notch. It is not a Biological Station where you will go hungry or dislike the food. Delicious. Anyway, we hiked into the forest. Starting off, we saw some spider monkeys (genus Ateles) and heard howler monkeys bellowing (oddly enough, they sound like a large dog. Except this dog is hanging out high up in the tree canopy.) La Selva has three species of monkeys, so two out of three before we had really started our hike wasn't too shabby. Howler monkeys are pretty interesting, and they lead tough lives from birth. Female howlers will attempt to kill young howler monkeys of other females in order to increase their own offspring's success. How.....sweet. Howler monkeys live in troupes, and in La Selva usually band together in groups of about 15 or so individuals, which have an alpha male. That alpha male will sometimes attempt to kill the offspring of the females, so that he can mate with the females again. Priorities, I suppose. Add to that the fact that howler monkeys usually have only one or two offspring, and it's a bit of a hard life for baby howler monkeys.
The most interesting thing we found on our hike was a small group of Honduran white bats, Ectophylla alba, huddling together in a tent made from a Heliconia leaf. They're tent-making bats, one of 15 species in Latin America. They do it by cutting the side veins of the Heliconia leaf to the mid vein, which causes the sides of the leaf to fold over, creating a tent. Being small, the little white marshmallows huddle together for warmth and can be in groups of a dozen. In the little group we found, there were three. Usually the groups consist of one male, with a harem of females. Make of that what you wish.
With some extra time between dinner and our planned night hike, I explored some more. As mentioned earlier, I found a huge wolf spider. While the picture doesn't have much to show for scale, look at your hand, and imagine a spider as big as your palm. That's the approximate size. Fortunately, I found a friendly enough lizard after the spider, which wasn't nearly as creepy.
Shelob.
Much less creepy than Shelob.
And then came the night hike. Sitting on the porch of my cabin around dusk, I noticed a remarkable change in the makeup of the forest wildlife. It was a quick, but seamless transition into the chorus of katydids taking over for the night and producing much of the noise in the forest. It sneaks up on you inconspicuously. Then you realize that there has been an almost imperceptible change.Pretty neat. Once the night sets in, the fireflies start turning on their bioluminescence. You can turn off your flashlight and just watch the trees light up with males attempting to attract females. It's a dazzling mating ritual.
These guys are tricky.
During the night hike, we finally found some snakes. I was excited, but kept my distance. I respect snakes, but would rather leave them to be investigated by the herpetologists. All the snakes we found were in the trees, hunting for their meals, and were relatively small. No fer-de-lances or anacondas. I'll spare you the blurry pictures: I'm sure Google and Flickr have better ones than I do. Still, they were pretty neat. Great camouflage on them, they're tough to spot even from a few feet away. The fauna at night was quite different, and more diverse than what I had found during my day explorations. More frogs were out, especially the tree frogs, and I found a camel cricket, stick insect, scarab beetle, many moths, and some Hemipterans. We even saw an armadillo come lumbering across the path. Looking back at the pictures, I can't help but notice some similarities between some bugs I found at La Selva and some I've found back in Ohio.
I couldn't leave this picture out. This guy was found near our cabin.
Unfortunately, my second and last day at La Selva arrived all too quickly. A 6:30 AM wake up time was a bit daunting, but necessarily. Following the advice of some other men who were staying at the station, some friends and I took some pieces of banana over to the bridge after breakfast, and dropped them into the river. A few seconds later, the waters were churning (and continued to churn after we kept throwing in more pieces): there were frugivorous piranha in the river.
The assignment for the day was to go into the forest and find a relationship between two organisms. While quite simple, I was enamored with the thought of having four hours to explore the rain forest. So off my partner and I went!
Check out those mandibles.
As you can tell, the exploration started off very well. That's a longhorn beetle, and its antennae were indeed quite long. The beetle itself was at least three inches long.
We eventually reached a meadow of sorts, and found a termite nest at least three feet in height and about two in width, six feet up a tree. It had trails crossing all over the tree, and was doing a number on it: the tree was slowly being hollowed out. Even more interesting is that the termites themselves have a mutualism with protozoa in their guts: the protozoa digest the cellulose from the wood for the termites. On top of that, the protozoa have mutualistic bacteria inside them that help to produce enzymes to help break down the cellulose. Ecology: just when you think you have a clear-cut relationship, more and more get piled on.
While not as terrifying as a wasp nest, still not something to mess with.
Then we saw the bullet ant nest. And by saw, I mean to say we walked through a line of bullet ants without realizing it at first. Not necessarily the best thing to do, but the bullet ants didn't seem to mind. I laid my pencil on the ground for scale while I was taking pictures of the ants, and one go-getter decided to attack the pencil. It bit the top, wrapped its legs around it, and attempted to sting it quite vigorously. If that had been my finger instead of the pencil, I would have been in some intense pain. As in, enough pain that I wouldn't be able to do much with that finger for a few days. Or possibly hand and arm, for that matter. Yeah, don't get bitten by bullet ants.
I wonder which hurts more: the bite from a bullet ant, or the bite from a wheel bug.
After passing by another line of bullet ants (one ant had an unfortunate caterpillar in its jaws), we came upon a small gazebo and sat down for a while, gathering our thoughts, watching the activity around us, and listening to the sounds emanating from the forest.We saw a coati (related to the raccoon) digging around and then sunning itself (it looked very zen), heard the calls of howler monkeys, the grunts of peccaries, and the droning of cicadas.
A coati: the elongated raccoon of the forest.
Leaving the gazebo and heading back to the station, we saw the aforementioned raptor bird, some gigantic trees, and more interesting insects. We saw an agouti, and while I was busy taking a picture of a leaf-footed bug, I heard a scream. Apparently a bullet ant had hitched a ride on my partner, and she noticed it crawling over her knuckles while she was waiting on me to get my picture of the bug. Thankfully, she shook it off quickly. Dodged that bullet.
Yes, that is a very tall tree.
If there were raptors at La Selva, they would be hiding in there.
After that excitement, we continued on our way. The last thing of note we found were some mantis oothecae (egg sacs), both at least two inches in length. Now, a Chinese mantis, which is about three inches long, lays an ootheca about the size of a ping pong ball. I would have loved to see the mantis that laid these ones, it would have been quite large.
After buying some identification guides for beetles, it was time to head back. La Selva is a great place to find all kinds of wildlife and interactions, and it was a great opportunity to be able to visit. You could easily spend months (or more) there and never get bored.
Sadly, I can't post all the pictures I would like to from my trip, but here's a small summary of what else I saw while I was at La Selva:
-Ctenosaurs/Iguanas? hanging out in the tree limbs above the river
-Very sharp (tested myself) thorns erupting in bands from a tree stem. Did not stop the epiphytes from growing on the smooth space in between the bands of thorns, however.
-Katydids, beetles, moths, frogs, wolf spiders, turkey bird...
-Tree growing halfway up a dead one: it needed that sunlight!
-A flower high in the canopy dropping long threads of who knows what. Think white spaghetti noodles.
-Nine harvestmen (Opiliones, AKA Daddy-long-legs) on one leaf.
In Ohio, there's a delightfully gregarious caterpillar known as Manduca sexta, or the tobacco hornworm. It's placed within the Sphingidae family, which is composed of the hawk moths. Take a look at the Wikipedia page for the hawk moths: they're all spectacular. Some of the adult moths resemble birds or bees, they're just amazing. To get back on topic, the tobacco hornworm feeds on tobacco (obviously), as well as other plants within the family Solanaceae, which includes tomatoes. This makes them pests to gardeners, which is pretty unfair. Tobacco hornworms develop into some beautiful moths and are quite large, so they're truly a sight to see once they reach maturity. Luckily for me, they also feed on Datura wrightii, a plant within the same family as tobacco and tomato, which grows near my house.
I had the fortune of finding a few of the caterpillars on the Datura plant, so I plucked them along with some leaves and placed them in a container in my room. They were still in their early instars (An instar is simply a stage in the life of a caterpillar. As it grows, it will molt and enter a different instar, gradually getting bigger as it enters each successive instar.) and so were relatively small, as you can see from the pictures. Of course, they did not stay small for long. I ended up plucking five or more leaves each day for each caterpillar in order to give them enough food, and I still wasn't sure if that amount was enough. They would eat through all the leaves in short order, and sometimes I found myself getting even more leaves for them throughout the day.
And so, they each progressed through their instars, growing larger and larger. I was surprised at just how big they were getting: these aren't small, inch-long creatures. If you're creeped out by large worms or snakes, then you won't like these guys (but you should anyway). Taking a look at the pictures now, you can start to notice their stripes and small eye-like spots on their sides. The stripes are one way to distinguish them from a similar species, the tomato hornworm, which also feeds on tomatoes. It has eight V-shaped markings, while the tobacco hornworm has the seven diagonal stripes*. The stripes serve another purpose as well: camouflage. The stripes break up the hornworm's pattern while it's feeding on leaves, helping it to blend in with the overall shape and color of the plant. If you encounter a plant with skeletonized leaves, it's a good indication that a caterpillar has been feeding on the plant, but even if the caterpillar is still on the plant while you're looking at it, it's no guarantee that you'll find it. They're remarkably hard to find, even when you know they're there (which is remarkably frustrating).
Now, the orange eye-like spots on the hornworm's side are its spiracles. Spiracles are how insects breathe, simply put. It probably doesn't hurt the insect's chances of survival that its spiracles look like eyes, either.
In the picture below, one of the caterpillars has undergone ecdysis (molting), and has entered its next instar. Tobacco hornworms usually have five instar stages, but can have more depending on growth conditions. Near the caterpillar's posterior end, you can see the remains of its previous molt. The caterpillar proceeded to eat these remains. When a kid is growing and needs nutrients, they're forced to eat vegetables. When you're a caterpillar, you eat what used to be your skin. Except for the head case. That part is too hard, so it just pops off and is left alone.
Pictured: a delicious gourmet meal
You can tell that the caterpillars have grown much larger than they used to be. The most mind-blowing fact about it is that these pictures were all taken over the course of about a week. Caterpillars can grow pretty quickly.
Caterpillar excrement is known as "frass." It fertilizes plants and all that good stuff. Also, you can hear it falling down the leaves of trees and other plants like rain sometimes.
The small reddish brown object is the pupa of another caterpillar, Ceratomia catalpae.
Still eating.
At a certain point during the hornworm's fifth instar, it starts undergoing physiological changes signaling its body that it's time to pupate. Different hormones start being produced, and the hornworm's behavior changes. Effectively, it's puberty, but with less pimples. One of the behavioral changes is quite pronounced, and results in the caterpillar entering a so-called "wandering stage." The caterpillar descends from its plant and starts walking around on the ground, looking for a good place to burrow into the dirt. Or, if the caterpillar is in an insect cage, it will walk around the enclosure and stomp on everything. (Various sources recommended that I remove excess frass to avoid a messy situation. It was a very helpful recommendation, and saved me a lot of cleanup time later on. If you decide to raise a hornworm, you would do well to heed the same advice.) After a little while of wandering and being much more active than it was during its feeding stages, the hornworm will start to dig into the soil. It's a fascinating process: the hornworm uses its body as a shovel. It doesn't so much as dig a burrow as pulverizes its way down into the dirt and decides "Yep, this'll do." I found I had new respect for my hornworm after watching it go underground.
Lateral view, the hornworm at work.
The problem with not having quite enough dirt in the insect cage.
A fascinating visual cue that the hornworm has entered its wandering stage is the presence of its aorta (its heart). On the "back" of the hornworm (its dorsal side, for those of you anatomically inclined), the hornworm's aorta pumps its blood (technically hemolymph, I do believe), which is quite conspicuous.
The hornworm's aorta, hard at work.
After the wandering and digging, the hornworm settles in for some huge changes to its anatomy and physiology.
Also notice how the posterior end of the hornworm looks a bit like a face. Some mimicry, perhaps.
While that hornworm is busy pupating, let us catch up with the other hornworm.
.....or not.
And now it is time to learn about one of the most interesting natural phenomena in the animal kingdom: Parasitoidism. You may know about parasites: nematodes, flatworms, and according to some, politicians (we won't get into that argument here). Parasitoids are similar to parasites in that they also live inside of a host and feed from it. However, parasitoids take parasitism one step further. Parasites live and feed off of a host, yes, but they do it in a way that doesn't kill the host. If the host dies, the parasite also dies since it loses its food supply. Parasitoids, on the other hand, have little concern for the well-being of the host. In a parasitoid-host relationship, the parasitoid feeds off the host in such a way that the host dies. The parasitoid has special adaptations that allow it to survive after the death of the host, so to the parasitoid, the final result for the host doesn't matter.
So what does that mean in the context of Manduca sexta?
Manduca sexta has the misfortune of being prey for some species of wasps in the family Braconidae, which contains a variety of parasitoid wasps. These wasps seek out various caterpillars, and when they find them, they lay their eggs inside of the caterpillar. This is bad news for the caterpillar, as its defensive options are limited. The plants it feeds on contain toxic chemicals, and there is evidence that some caterpillars can ingest more leaves containing these chemicals to self-medicate against parasitoid infection**, though such a study has not been researched specifically for Manduca sexta. However, it is not too much of a leap to hypothesize that the hornworms could make use of toxic chemicals in an attempt to kill the parasitoids.
As a side note, such parasitoidism is obviously beneficial for the host plant of the caterpillar, as it can suffer severe skeletonization of its leaves due to the caterpillar's voracious appetite. The plant is not entirely defenseless, however, and is able to release chemicals to attract such parasitoids to rid itself of the caterpillars. To learn more, check out this wonderful article from Scientific American.
So, the hornworm has had the misfortune of being parasitized. What can it look forward to? Aside from the hope that the eggs won't hatch, not much. Its future is pretty bleak. First, the eggs will hatch. The wasp larvae will start eating the insides of the caterpillar. Since they are parasitoids, not parasites, they won't have much respect for the normal, healthy functioning of the various organs and systems of the caterpillar. The little respect for the caterpillar's health that the wasp larvae will have will simply be not eating the vital organs first, allowing the caterpillar to live so that the larvae will have a safe place to develop. Once they have grown sufficiently, the larvae move on to phase two.
The larvae eat their way through the caterpillar's skin. If you go back to the picture of the larvae coming out of the hornworm, you will notice a few dark circles on the caterpillar. Those are wasp larvae eating their way out, almost breaking through the skin. Once the larvae have made it out of the caterpillar, they will immediately start spinning cocoons. They will stay in the cocoons for about a week or two, and then emerge as adults. During all this time, the caterpillar is still alive. Depending on nature's mercy, the caterpillar may die soon after the wasp larvae have burst from its body, or it may stay alive until the adult wasps emerge from their cocoons, and even for a few days after. I imagine the caterpillar curses its existence if it is in that predicament.
Adult braconid wasps emerging from their cocoons.
The cocoons look like small white egg sacks. There can be as many as 50 or more on one caterpillar, depending on its size and unluckiness.
These adult wasps will each seek out other caterpillar targets.
The resulting caterpillar.
For an even more gruesome lesson on parasitoidism, National Geographic has you covered.
Now, time to move on to a healthy hornworm.
Pupal stage.
The caterpillar has undergone quite a change while underground, resulting in its pupal stage (also known as Metapod, to Pokémon fans). The most outstanding feature is the curved tube at its anterior end, which its tongue grows in. The pupa is not entirely defenseless. When touched, it will jerk its posterior end violently, which is quite startling if you do not expect it (I speak here from personal experience). The pupal stage also takes place while buried a few inches underground, which isolates it from many predators.
As the moth gets closer to eclosion (emergence from the pupal stage), the pupa will get darker and more translucent.
It will turn almost purple in some areas.
Finally, the moth will emerge from the pupa. I assume the orange-brown liquid to be hemolymph, though I haven't found a source identifying it for sure.
The pupal stage lasted a little over two weeks, and the final result was...
It's quite a beautiful moth, very "furry." It's also quite large, to the degree of a small bird. Knowing the size of its caterpillar and pupa, it's no surprise.
Check out those eyes! Also notice the tongue curled up into a ball. The adult feeds on nectar.
A full view of the body and wings. Notice the series of orange spots on its abdomen, absolutely stunning. There are six on each side, twelve in all. I assume these are what the sexta (Latin for six) in the species name refers to.
View of the closed wings. The newly emerged moth cannot fly, but must first pump hemolymph into its wings.
Ventral view, with ruler for scale.
It has quite the wingspan.
Truly, it's a beautiful moth. It's a shame they're seen as pests.
This particular specimen is now located in the collections at Marietta College.
For more information about Manduca sexta, check out the following websites:
