David L. Wagner - Owlet Caterpillars of Eastern North America

D AVID L. W AGNER , D ALE F. S CHWEITZER , J. B OLLING S ULLIVAN, AND R ICHARD C. R EARDON

With special acknowledgment for support received from the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service FHTET and Discover Life in America

P RINCETON U NIVERSITY P RESS
P RINCETON AND O XFORD

This work is dedicated to our late friends and colleagues Douglas C.
Ferguson and John G. Franclemont. Both shared a special interest in
noctuoids, their immature stages, and life history studies.
_________________________________________

Copyright 2011 by David L. Wagner
Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to
Permissions, Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton,
New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street,
Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
press.princeton.edu

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Owlet caterpillars of eastern North America / David L. Wagner ... [et al.]. 1st ed.
p. cm.
Companion volume to: Geometroid caterpillars of northeastern and Appalachian forests.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-691-15042-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. NoctuidaeEast (U.S.)Identification. 2. NoctuidaeCanada, EasternIdentification. 3. CaterpillarsEast (U.S.)Identification. 4. CaterpillarsCanada, EasternIdentification. I. Wagner, David L., 1956- II. Geometroid caterpillars of northeastern and Appalachian forests.
QL561.N7O95 2011
595.78139097dc23 2011016905

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

Publication of this book has been aided by support received from the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service FHTET and Discover Life in America

This book has been composed in Minion and Myriad Pro
Printed on acid-free paper.

Typeset and designed by D & N Publishing, Wiltshire, UK

Printed in Singapore
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

SPECIES ACCOUNTS

Owlet moths are one of our planets most successful lineages of organismsmore than 75,000 species are known worldwide, and thousands more remain unnamed. While some owlet caterpillars are important pests in woodlands and forests, agricultural landscapes, gardens, and orchards, the vast majority make a positive contribution to the health of our forests and other wildlands as forage for birds (especially during the nesting season), rodents, and other vertebrates. A few lineages serve as macrodecomposers, consuming fallen leaves and thereby accelerating the cycling of nutrients in wooded landscapes. Adult owlets pollinate many temperate plants and, like their larvae, are important to the diets of birds, bats, and other insectivorous vertebrates (see pages 9 and 10).

Literature on North American owlet caterpillars and their life histories is widely scattered and, for many species, lacking. This book was written as a companion volume to Geometroid Caterpillars of Northeastern and Appalachian Forests (Wagner et al. 2002). Geographic coverage is expanded in this work to include the North American owlet fauna found east of the hundredth meridian. The ecological scope is broadened to include all community types where owlet caterpillars are found, including agricultural lands, gardens, and parks. While ostensibly it is an identification guide for caterpillars, we also added images of adults and other life stages, as well as relevant information about natural enemies, chemical ecology, insect behavior, invertebrate conservation, and myriad other aspects of lepidopterology. Collectively, the first three authors have been studying eastern noctuoids and related moths for more than 110 years; much unpublished data has been included.

Introductory sections on finding caterpillars, rearing, baiting, and natural enemies are extensive, and include information not easily found elsewhere. Larvae of numerous species are illustrated and described here for the first time. We supply new foodplant records and observations on behavior, phenology, abundance, development, and overwintering stages. Many erroneous foodplant records, some of which have been repeated in the literature for upwards of 100 years, are corrected. Text for nearly 90 species (of the 815 treated in this work) is reproduced from Caterpillars of Eastern North America (Wagner 2005), although in many cases we modified the species account, e.g., by rewriting or adding text to the Remarks section. For nearly all of the shared species, we selected different larval images to illustrate this work so that the two books would be complementary.

The text was written to be understandable and useful to educators and the general public, while also serving the needs of professional entomologists, forest managers, extension agents, and conservation biologists. From the outset, we were disposed to writing a book that could serve as a portal into entomology for students and those without training in the sciences. The expanded introductory sections and species remarks were written with these audiences in mind. We propose many new common names for individual species and higherlevel taxa that more closely reflect current knowledge of evolutionary relationships, taxonomy, foodplant usage, or simply to distance this work from misapplied or ill-chosen names that have been carried forward for too long.

An important goal was to assemble a work that would engender a greater appreciation for caterpillars and other aspects of biological diversity. Caterpillars can be attractive creatures and some noctuoids stunningly so. Dagger moth caterpillars are a study in diversity, some awash in reds, oranges, and yellows; cuculliine larvae are reminiscent of hand-painted and kiln-fired ceramic figurines; most foresters (agaristines) are exquisitely rendered with rings of black and orange.

For nearly every species, we provide an image. In addition, we collaborated with a host of photographers to supply images of live adults in an attempt to foster an appreciation for living moths as they might be encountered in naturethis is the first book of New World moths to do so in a comprehensive manner.

We have done our best to prepare a work that succinctly summarizes current knowledge. However, because many owlets are unstudied, we routinely had to wrestle with uncertainty regarding stated ranges, phenologies, foodplants, and which (if any) salient features would prove diagnostic. In some cases we extrapolated information about a species from admittedly limited collections or experience. The sheer scope of this effort and the preliminary state of our knowledge convince us that species accounts will need to be corrected or in other ways emendedDLW will maintain and make available an erratum and addendum on his website (see the link at http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9420.html). The site will also include additional species accounts, supplementary images, and other on-line resources.