Pipevine food sources

[JimJoanJoy at aol.com]

The key sentence is "no obvious pipevines".
 
Pipevine is an elusive plant and often very difficult to find at  certain 
times of the year. Botanists frequently fail to record this plant in  areas where 
it occurs. I'm not sure why but have a feeling that often this  is due to the 
voracious appetites of the larvae. What happens is that the cats  eat their 
original plant down to the nubs making it nearly impossible to find  and 
leaving nothing more to eat until regenerated with more  rainfall. 
 
So to best find the plants one should search just prior to the flights of  
the adults, not after and better following heavy rains where the cats cannot  
keep up with the fast growth of the plant. This works here in Arizona. Not sure  
if it works elsewhere but try it.
 
Also, people frequently find and report larvae on different plants thinking  
that they have a new host. What they are finding are cats in transit. These 
are  cats that have eaten all of the previous plant and are actually searching 
for  another plant. One sees this all the time around here and I'm nearly 
convinced  that it is important nutritionally for them to actually eat the stems 
down to  the ground in their last instar. It would be great for some student to 
check  this out since it is so common to see wandering cats in SE AZ.
 
The other interesting aspect to this is watching female oviposition  
behavior. I have watched on many occasion, a female touching plants numerous  times 
before finally laying her egg. She'll touch more than one or two plants  almost 
as if she knows that her offspring will need more than one plant to grow  to 
maturity.
 
So if you think there's no pipevine in your area but you have the bug  
consistently, I bet the plant is there and all one has to do is watch the  females. 
They'll show you where the plant is. Oviposition behavior by female  Pipevine 
Swallowtails is usually a deliberate, "searching for something" flight  - 
close to the ground and often repeatedly going back over the same area.
 
Good luck,  Jim Brock
 
 
 
 
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