Caterpillars of Costa Rica / Orugas de Costa Rica's Journal

We reached 10,000 observations! The list is complete from May 18, 2022 through February 8, 2024. This is not 100% accurate; for example, I imagine many of the Hylesia are incorrectly ID'd as H. continua when there are actually at least 20 species in this genus found in the country. But without a good guide to all of the thousands of larvae you might see, this is a great starting point.

Obviously there is much more work to do, and I'll keep picking at it, but I think it's in good shape to continue on its own. Thanks to everyone who has helped out!

There are now over 500 species listed in this project! Of course, some of those are misidentified, so the number may fluctuate as IDs get cleared up. Pura vida!

We have just passed 8000 observations in this project, and are approaching 500 species! I think I will stop actively curating photos once we hit 10,000. I feel like that should be enough to give a good breakdown of what people are seeing. Of course, there are many observations that have yet to be identified, so there is still a lot of work to do. And I won't shut down the project, so others can continue to add observations by marking "larva" on the Life Stage category.

I got back from Costa Rica about a week and a half ago and I'm finally caught up with everything. I added a few more of my own caterpillar observations to the guide! We are now at 7155 observations of 476 species.

Caterpillars submitted after May 24, 2022 have been added to the project. Thanks to @lotteryd and others who have already done a lot of the work of labeling these as larvae. Currently at 6781 observations and 465 species.

I have now included all larvae submitted after May 31, 2022. Total count stands at 6,271 observations.

In addition, I have secured all of my travel plans for my next trip back to Costa Rica in April of this year. Hopefully I will be able to add some more caterpillar to my my meager 12 observations!

Thank you for checking out this project, which will attempt to compile all of the lepidopteran larva observations on iNaturalist for Costa Rica.

Unfortunately, iNat does not require observations to be categorized by life stage, so many of the caterpillar photos are not easily found. I have been working on adding "larva" designations to any caterpillar observations from CR that I find. I have gone backwards from the present to June 7, 2022 and labeled all the caterpillars I have seen. I will continue to work on this, but it takes a long time!

There are already close to 6000 observations in the project but there are many more to add. My methods aren't perfect, and I'm sure I will miss some, but ultimately we should get a good look at the caterpillars that people are seeing in Costa Rica.