Post by bobw on Aug 19, 2020 12:19:12 GMT
First, let me point out that Catocala are tricky things to rear. I’ve bred hundreds of different species of butterflies and moths over the years and Cats are among the hardest. I no longer have the time or inclination for mass breeding so for the last few years I’ve concentrated on Cats as it’s one of the few genera that I actually collect. As well as the species shown I also had ova of piatrix, flebilis, unijuga and ultronia this year, but the piatrix and unijuga ova proved to be infertile. The flebilis foodplant is hickory, to which I have no access but most hickory feeders will take walnut, however, the flebilis larvae refused to touch it. The ultronia larvae are supposed to feed mainly on Prunus and other fruit trees, I offered them various types of cherry, plum and apple but they refused everything. Hickory is also the foodplant for lacrymosa but they happily accepted walnut, all the others I reared this year are poplar or willow feeders and I did them all on black poplar.
I started off with varying numbers of eggs of the different species, mainly courtesy of Larry Gall, I fact I only had 5 eggs of semirelicta so this was the most successful species and the only time I’ve ever had a 100% record egg to adult of any Catocala species, conversely I started with more than 100 eggs of lacrymosa and you can see how many I got through. Over the past few years I’ve also reared obscura, retecta, vidua and palaeogama on walnut, relicta and briseis on poplar and grynea on apple; as well as the 4 this year, I’ve also failed miserably with amatrix, umbrosa, connubialis and micronympha, the last 3 of which are oak feeders. I’ve also reared 9 European species and 13 from far-east Russia, and failed with 3 others. I’ve never managed to get a North American oak feeder through but I’ve done it with 10 European or Russian species! The one thing I have done, which is invaluable for future breeding, is keep a detailed spreadsheet with dates and numbers so I know what success rates I’ve had in each stage and how long each stage took.
I’ll try to add more on techniques later.
I started off with varying numbers of eggs of the different species, mainly courtesy of Larry Gall, I fact I only had 5 eggs of semirelicta so this was the most successful species and the only time I’ve ever had a 100% record egg to adult of any Catocala species, conversely I started with more than 100 eggs of lacrymosa and you can see how many I got through. Over the past few years I’ve also reared obscura, retecta, vidua and palaeogama on walnut, relicta and briseis on poplar and grynea on apple; as well as the 4 this year, I’ve also failed miserably with amatrix, umbrosa, connubialis and micronympha, the last 3 of which are oak feeders. I’ve also reared 9 European species and 13 from far-east Russia, and failed with 3 others. I’ve never managed to get a North American oak feeder through but I’ve done it with 10 European or Russian species! The one thing I have done, which is invaluable for future breeding, is keep a detailed spreadsheet with dates and numbers so I know what success rates I’ve had in each stage and how long each stage took.
I’ll try to add more on techniques later.