innovative bagworms

Here, on Grabov Rat, we daily learn more and more about our environment. More about an unbelievable assortment of bugs and pests, actually. Look, the strange structure (photo on the right) was attached to the very top of a rosemary branch. Strange structure because the ‘leaves’ or ‘petals’ on it are carefully cut out of a white plastic grocery bag and glued so firmly to a central cone-shaped part that it’s impossible to separate them by hand. Only with scissors we were able to look inside the structure [ROLLOVER].

With a web help, we believe this is the bagworm, Thyridopteryx ephemeraeformis (Haworth), the larval stage of a moth, which attacks both decidu- ous and evergreen trees. The cone-shaped bags, which bagworms form, are carefully interwoven using silk and bits of leaves and twigs from the host plant resulting in a well-disguised covering. (According to the literature; our specimen obviously advanced to include the man-made materials.) The tops of the young larvae are shiny black and their body undersides are dull amber. When fully grown, the bagworms are a dull, dirty, gray with darker markings toward the head. The adult male develops into a moth that can fly, but the female remains grub-like and stays inside the bag. The eggs over-winter inside the bag; egg hatch occurs from late May to early June, at which time the larvae crawl out in search of food. Each constructs a small bag around its hind parts with silk and plant material.

 2010-08-08 

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