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Its consumption of toxic plants makes it distasteful to most predators. An exception is the smooth-billed ani (Crotophaga ani), which tears the caterpillar apart to eat it, avoiding the gut containing the plant material. The caterpillar is also coated in barbed urticating hairs, which stick deeply in skin and cause irritation. If caught, the ...
Plants contain toxins which protect them from herbivores, but some caterpillars have evolved countermeasures which enable them to eat the leaves of such toxic plants. In addition to being unaffected by the poison, the caterpillars sequester it in their body, making them highly toxic to predators. The chemicals are also carried on into the adult ...
Certain caterpillars eat plants that are toxic to both themselves and the parasite to cure themselves. [24] Drosophila melanogaster larvae also self-medicate with ethanol to treat parasitism. [25] D. melanogaster females lay their eggs in food containing toxic amounts of alcohol if they detect parasitoid wasps nearby. The alcohol protects them ...
The tree in which a female deposits the eggs is where the larvae will choose to feed. The most common host plants that caterpillars feed on are leaves from stonefruit trees. However, larvae will feed on many other types of tree foliage. Adult moths do not eat and live for 1–4 days. [7]
Cutworms are moth larvae that hide under litter or soil during the day, coming out in the dark to feed on plants. A larva typically attacks the first part of the plant it encounters, namely the stem, often of a seedling, and consequently cuts it down; hence the name cutworm. Cutworms are not worms, biologically speaking, but caterpillars.
The caterpillars of the gray hairstreak butterfly consume a wide range of food plants. [3] However, they do mainly use mallows and legumes as their preferred host plant. They commonly use clovers as their food plant as well, eating rabbit-foot clover (Trifolium arvense), white clover (T. repens), bush clover (Lespedeza capitata), white sweet-clover (Melilotis alba), and Malva neglecta.
Manduca quinquemaculata, the five-spotted hawkmoth, is a brown and gray hawk moth of the family Sphingidae.The caterpillar, often referred to as the tomato hornworm, can be a major pest in gardens; they get their name from a dark projection on their posterior end and their use of tomatoes as host plants.
The caterpillars feed mostly on acacia (wattle) trees and Grevillea striata (beefwood). If they have totally defoliated their food tree, the caterpillars migrate to seek out another one, leaving a silk trail. When a caterpillar of the species encounters such a trail it will follow it, especially if there is a pheromone scent associated with it ...