Caterpillar

Description:

The female Plain Tiger perches on the upperside of a leaf and, curling its abdomen around the edge, lays an egg on the underside. Only one egg is laid per leaf to avoid overcrowding of the caterpillars. The egg is silvery white, shiny, tall, bullet-shaped with an apical point and ribbed sides. After the caterpillar hatches, its first meal is the eggshell itself. It lives its entire larval life on the lower side of the leaves. During the first few days it has a very interesting manner of feeding: It will take up a spot on the underside of the leaf and nip a complete circle around itself in the lower cuticle of the leaf. By doing this it stops the poisonous sap of its host plant from flowing into the area inside the circle. It then proceeds to eats the lower surface of this area, leaving the upper cuticle intact. As it grows, it eats both the lower and upper cuticle of the circle thus leaving smallish circular holes in the leaves of its host plant. When its mandibles are large enough it eats the complete leaf by gnawing at the edges. The caterpillar is uniformly cylindrical. Its body is covered with bands of black and white interspersed with thick, yellow, dorsolateral spots. The most striking characteristics are the three pairs of long and black tentacle-like appendages. The first pair is moveable and also the longest. The tentacles are present on the third, sixth and twelfth segments. The head is shiny, smooth and has alternating black and white semicircular bands. The legs and prolegs are black and the prolegs have white bands at their bases.