https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/241158271 (Week 3)
While I was on my way to a friend's house to babysit for them I came across this caterpillar that I had never seen before walking along the sidewalk. I personally know absolutely nothing about caterpillars except for their life cycle, so I was very excited to find this one so I could learn a bit about them. This specific caterpillar is a bedstraw hawk-moth (Hyles gallii). The caterpillars can easily be identified by a “dark brown-ish green, with bright yellow spots along the body and a red horn above the tail” (Butterfly Conservation). Now I know the photos that I have posted here are just the caterpillar and finding information on just the caterpillar has proven to be very difficult. Because of this, I will be talking about bedstraw hawk moths as a whole, but mainly in their adult final form. We as humans don’t interact with bedstraw hawk moths directly, but they are extremely useful to us indirectly. “Here in Juneau, we sometimes see the bedstraw hawk moth (Hyles gallii) as the adults visit fireweed and other flowers…carrying pollen on its fairly long proboscis (about an inch long)” (Juneau Empire), because they are some of our biggest pollinators. Pollinators are extremely important because “more than 80 percent of the world's flowering plants need a pollinator to reproduce, and we need pollinators too since most of our food comes from flowering plants. One out of every three bites of our food, including fruits, vegetables, chocolate, coffee, nuts, and spices, is created with the help of pollinators” (Randall).
Citations:
“Bedstraw Hawk-Moth.” Butterfly Conservation, butterfly-conservation.org/moths/bedstraw-hawk-moth. Accessed 12 Sept. 2024.
Mary F. Willson For the Juneau Empire Tuesday. “Hawk Moths in Southeast Alaska.” Juneau Empire, 20 Aug. 2019, www.juneauempire.com/news/hawk-moths-in-southeast-alaska/. Accessed 12 Sept. 2024.
Randall, Brianna. “The Value of Birds and Bees.” Farmers.Gov, 6 June 2022, www.farmers.gov/blog/value-birds-and-bees#:~:text=More%20than%2080%20percent%20of,with%20the%20help%20of%20pollinators. Accessed 12 Sept. 2024.
Comments
Good evening, Gianna,
These caterpillars are always quite the treat to see! They remind me of the scene in the Lion King where Timon and Pumba teach Simba to eat all those scrumptious looking bugs. I wonder if the horn is a way to deceive predators into not attacking. The red on their bodies are very vibrant. The moths themselves are awe-inspiring! I got a really good look at one during the year with the heat dome. It was heat exhausted and laying in the shade. They're monstrously huge! I was also lucky to find one by my garden last summer as well doing its pollenating action. Thanks for posting!
Wow! I never knew that these little caterpillars could help us indirectly this way or that we even had these types here. I love the details you provided and the amount of quotes you used from your sources. They are small but mighty when it comes to helping, like you said, pollinating 80% of our flowers and therefore spreading our food sources. No wonder Juneau is a great place for foraging different types of plants within our rainforest! I wonder what else they do for us or even for the ecosystem? You have definitely inspired me to keep my eyes peeled and search for these little guys outside on my next walk!
Thank you for drawing in caterpillars to our project on iNaturalist, Gianna! Usually, we all discover just how much we are blind to the natural world around us when we engage in this part of the class, and it takes us a while to begin to see more than just the super obvious things we may already be familiar with. Nice job with keen eyes, and thanks for sharing your finding here.
Also, great work using MLA Format already with your Works Cited and in-text citations! This week we officially learn about MLA Format, and so you can begin to use our owl.purdue website to check your work going forward.
Best,
Prof. Brooke
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