Black Swallowtails

[Lemmon]

I checked with Jeff Fengler who raised 92 species of butterflies with me to see which species we had detect color as it pupated.  I couldn't remember which Lady did this and did not want to pull out numerous notebooks to check.  Jeff tells me that an American Lady reared in our lab, turned two different colors depending on its background.  One was against a metal cage and turned a dull silver color.  The other ones were on live plants and were green.  Evidently this is a phenomenon worth looking into.  We have (old fashioned slides of these)  I don't have a slide scanner at home but Jeff does, in case anyone wants to see them.

Carol lemmon
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: RChyinski at aol.com 
  To: ctleps-l at lists.yale.edu 
  Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 8:57 AM
  Subject: Black Swallowtails


  Info on the Black Swallowtails I have been raising. To save the Dill plants in the garden I collected most of the caterpillars shortly after they emerged from their eggs and placed them in a terrarium on live Dill and Fennel plants. As the caterpillars grew to full size I placed dry sticks in the terrarium to give them a place to attach to and form chrysalis. The attached photo shows the difference in color of the chrysalis between the ones on the sticks and the ones on the live plants. 
  I have not read much about the ability of caterpillars to detect the color of the object they are using to attach to and to adjust their color to match that color and was wondering if this is common in all butterfly species.

  Rich Chyinski


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