Butterfly-predacious Hornets
Pierre A Plauzoles
ae779 at lafn.org
Mon Aug 3 17:42:13 EDT 1998
In a previous article, lday at iquest.net (Liz Day) says:
>Doug Y. (I think) told me they eat the thoraces because that's where the
>most muscles (flight muscles) are, for protein.
>
>I don't think hornets or yellow jackets are really that bad, they eat
>caterpillars but I think most of those are "pest" caterpillars. I haven't
>SEEN them going for our butterflies, but that doesn't mean they aren't.
>
>Would a hornet nest really affect the butterfly population near it?
Possibly. I once saw a sphinx moth caterpillar (Smerinthus cerisyi,
Cerisy's sphinx, as I recall) at the Nature Conservancy's Kern River
Preserve (now transferred to Audubon) that had been taken by a large
wasp (the site where the wasp had injected the caterpillar with its
paralysing agent or whatever was visible). The wasp dropped the
caterpillar when an observer working on the preserve's biodiversity came
around the corner of an adjacent building. How great the effect will be,
I suppose, depends on the numbers of wasps and butterflies (and moths and
their caterpillars) present.
--
Pierre Plauzoles ae779 at lafn.org
Canoga Park, California
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