Young Lives Convergence

Nature Notes

In my regular morning walks on weekends purposely for documenting our local butterflies, i also see lots of many life forms. Most of them are new to me, i've only seen for the first time and i sometimes still have to do a great deal in identifying them or at least look for the groups of animals they belong. I normally post them in Facebook groups for proper identification. It is challenging if the find is really unusual that i still have to wait for days, and when i cannot anymore wait i also post them and ask my friends here in the blogpost.

The other weekend, i again documented a few plants, insects, spiders and others which i don't know what groups they belong with. I will be posting here first the larvae of insects, and more. Spiders need another future post.

 Both the above and the lower photos are of the same moth. The above is at the pre-pupation stage or last instar of the larva, while the lower picture is the pupa. I am amazed at the disappearance of the black color in the pupa. It is the PALE GREEN AWLET, Bibasis gomata.

Honestly, i have only seen its adult just once at home. This time i hope i will be able to photograph more of them. The Schefflera plant was fully defoliated leaving only half of the individual leaf  to house these pupae. Actually, there's a lot of them there. I took 2 pupae and brought them with me to the city. It has already been more than a week, but they have not eclosed yet.

 The above are larvae of the MOTTLED EMIGRANT, Catopsilia pomona pomona. They prefer to eat the leaves of akapulko, Cassia alata. However, a lot of them are also eating the golden shower, Casia fistula. The akapulko plant is still small and the leaves are fully defoliated also. At least i am already familiar with them as i already tried rearing it last year until eclosion.

 A single close-up of Mottled Emigrant. They normally are in company of red ants, which protect them in exchange for the food they get from them.

Above is a larva of the bark borer of lanzones. It is a very bad pest that limits lanzones production in the country. They eat the cambium layer of the tree, that cracks the bark which eventually dry. Lanzones fruits emerged from the bark, termed cauliflorous, so when the barks dried up flowers and fruits will not be possible. One distinguishing characteristics of this moth larva is to attach themselves to a string they create to hold on to, so eventualy when it is already safe again they will come up to the tree via that string. I still haven't seen also the adult of this moth. 

 Above is an egg of a yellow butterfly, Eurema blanda. This plant is a weed legume, that thrives well in our area. No wonder we have lots of those yellow butterflies.

 The above thing has been a puzzle to me. I touched it but it didn't budge. I don't even know if it is a living organism or a debris. I checked the close-up playback in my camera and i was intrigued by the design of those leaf-like skirt. It seems to be alive. I searched and asked the Philippine Lepidoptera group and someone confirmed my feeling that it is a house of a bagmoth! Again, it is my first time to see such structure.

Lastly, these are babies too, technically called nymps of grasshoppers. They also defoliated the okra plants, because i saw two groups or patches like this, one patch per hill of 3 okra plants each hill. I am sure when they get bigger they will defoliate a lot more leaves in the vicinity. I just don't know how long will they stay here before they disperse to seek for their own food.

Nature Notes