Favoritos de jane41

Different individuals. They appear out of nowhere indoors from one corner of the room, consistently between 7pm-4am, in the hundreds. I can't find where they spawn from or where their food source is.

Update: They seemed to appear from tiny cracks between the wall and the floor, where it connects directly to the soil underneath. It's likely that they bred not in the building structure, but the soil, which explains their unlimited spawn. Sealing the cracks reduced their number but several dozens still made it through every night. They disappeared on their own every morning. Around 20 December, about two weeks after the daily rain stopped, their number decreased significantly, meaning that they're strongly tied to the rain cycle.

BottleCat 2021-07

The eggs were laid on Citrus. There were at least 5 batches of eggs found throughout the month. Somehow I never saw the caterpillars eat anything, but two of them managed to grow considerably, though only one survived in the end.

The last caterpillar has been seen nesting around decaying leaves, the corner of the container, and in the last few days, between two leaves. It mysteriously disappeared before the morning of the 20th day.

Egg: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/68099991
Caterpillar: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/69400222

Observation set: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?verifiable=any&place_id=any&field:Similar%20observation%20set=68099991

Info: BottleCats is the tag I use to track the ontogeny of lepidopterans in my backyard. Though bottled, I consider wild-caught caterpillars that naturally live and breed within our garden walls to be "wild," in terms of iNat labelling.

Spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AQUtjdS8-zRBCuTwiImymzYRcZrxHQXP-O51H9zl3PA/edit#gid=1116492635

See the images I took daily of this batch:
http://bottlecats.tumblr.com/tagged/202107