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E westwoodi larva
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| [Note Guidelines] Photographer's Note |
This is the final instar larva of Euploea westwoodi (C&R Felder, 1865). This is a Danaid butterfly of the same family as the New World "Monarchs", but this is from a distinctly Oriental part of the family.
Euploea westwoodi is endemic to the Sulawesi region. It has been treated by some authors, especially Yata and Morishita in 'Butterflies of the South East Asian Islands', as a sub-species of Euploea leucostictos (Gmelin, 1788), and these authors also include similar taxa from as far afield as Taiwan (E. hobsoni) the Nicobar islands (E. novarae) and Fiji (E. macleayi) into one "super-species". In 'The Butterflies of Sulawesi', Vane-Wright and de Jong retain westwoodi as a good species and restrict the range to Sulawesi, Bangka, Buton, Salayar, Tanahjampea, Kep. Banggai and Kep. Sula.
The larvae feed mostly on plants of the family Moraceae. As with their New World relatives, they are sometime known as "milkweed" butterflies as they feed on plants that contain pyralizidine alcoloids and thus become poisonous (or at least distasteful) to predatory birds. A drip of milky-white sap from the host plant is visible in the picture, to make the protrait complete.
As a result of being such a bad meal, they are able to display bright warning colours with wonderful filamentous appendages, rather than having to be discreetly camouflaged to match their host plants.
The pupa is rotund and gleaming metallic gold. The adult male velvety black above with a range of blue/purple markings. The adult females are brown above with whitish-blue streaks on both wings.
In 1985 I was lucky enough to be able to spend 4 months in the Forests of Northern Sulawesi and was thus able to find and breed through a number of native butterfly species. This is one of the most fascinating caterpillars from that trip.
Scanned from a 35mm slide using an OpticFilm 7200i scanner, cropped, resized and sharpened in CS3. |
jcoowanitwong, marhowie, Argus has marked this note useful
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| Discussions |
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Updated |
| To batu: Sulawesi | accassidy |
3 |
09-19 12:14 |
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Alan, Beautiful caterpillar with designer skin. I have never seen this in India. Very well captured. Effective use of flash.
- Murali Santhanam
- batu
![Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Star Workshop Editor/Gold Note Writer [C: 1010 W: 285 N: 3341]](http://i1.treknature.com/misc/g-g-g.gif)
(11046) - [2007-09-19 11:12]
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Hallo Alan,
thank you for posting this excellent picture of a westwoodii-caterpillar. It's of high quality having in mind that it is a slide scan.
Besides in Satyrinae, I'm particularly interested in Danainae. Furthermore, Sulawesi is one of my favourite regions in the world which harbours quite specific Danaines. Oberserving westwoodii and other large brown-blue Euploeas is always fascinating.
Best wishes, Peter
Hi Alan, bveautiful caterpillar with wonderful colors, great sharpness, very well done, ciao Silvio
Hi Alan,
Nice shot of this Euploea westwoodi caterpillar. Sharp focus and well seen image. Very well done.
JC
Hi Alan,
Well composed, good details and DOF. I like the dark BG also..
The flash looks a bit hard here. Try a negative exposure bias and/or diffuser on your flash to soften the light.
Well done.
Howard
PS - OK, I see this is from over 20 years ago, and a scanned slide. You get a pass on this one ;}
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- Argus
(23403)
- [2007-09-21 8:12]
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Hello Alan,
The use of flash on caterpillars is OK as far as I'm concerned, since the 'night time' effect is less important with most caterpillars being nocturnal as well as diurnal. Furthermore the black BG is an effective way of showing it up. Nice composition and sharpness too.
TFS and have a nice weekend,
Ivan
![Gold Star Critiquer/Silver Workshop Editor/Gold Note Writer [C: 207 W: 14 N: 552]](http://i1.treknature.com/misc/g-s-g.gif)
(3256)![Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Note Writer [C: 1596 W: 0 N: 2795]](http://i1.treknature.com/misc/g-n-g.gif)
(11461)