Day Four

We started the day with more photography of the specimens, as there were many that still needed to be cataloged with pictures along with their information. After helping out with that for a while I moved over to the Ambient Lab to assist in the rearing process for the caterpillars that had been documented and photographed.

For this stage in the process, it was time to check up on our specimens to see which ones have been parasitized, and which ones continued on to the pupae stage of their development. We went through each bag, cleaning out the dirt and feces that have been building up in the bags for the last few days, and filled bags with fresh leaves when needed (caterpillars need a LOT of food). Caterpillars that appeared to be parasitized had "PSIT" marked on their bag and hung up on a rack separate from the others. Those which appeared to be pupating were labeled "pupae", and bags where the caterpillar was doing neither where placed back in their original place on the rack. All of this was then logged into the computer database to track which specimens had become parasitized and which ones had not. Caterpillars that had been parasitized appeared sluggish and had white or black spots that can be seen in the caterpillars with translucent skin. Those that had pupated were found forming a hard, dark shell around their bodies and often held no resemblance to how they looked just a couple days prior. This took most of the day, and after that we spent the rest of the day and finding more caterpillars.