Subject: what's been eating my black swallowtails?

From: [email-masked] (Kurt Fox)
Date: 24 May 1995 16:54:50 GMT

I had some parsley in my veggie garden last year. I pick off a few (4 or 5)
black swallowtail caterpillars and fed them until they were chrysali (is this
the plural of chrysalis?). In any case, I expected them to hatch the following
spring, so I kept them all winter in my fridge. I brought them out this spring
expecting them to hatch. I now have noticed that I do not have any butterflies, but
I do have empty shells with a single noticeable mark: they all have a little
hole in the side of the casing, a little smaller than a pencil eraser head. It
is a nearly perfect circle. I figure that it was some sort of parasite (a wasp)
or predator (spider). 

o  Does anyone out there know what is was?
o  Was it a wasp that hatched and ate is way out, or a spider that ate it way in?
o  How can I stop this from happening again? (I'd rather expect butterflies when I
	raise buterflies)

Thanks in advance,
Kurt Fox

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From: [email-masked] (Doug Yanega)
Date: 24 May 1995 20:30:27 GMT

> o  How can I stop this from happening again? (I'd rather expect
butterflies when I

Clearly a wasp. There are *numerous* possibilities: most common are the
Braconid wasp Apanteles lunatus, the Ichneumonid wasp Trogus pennator, and
the Pteromalid wasp Pteromalus puparum. All are recorded from P. polyxenes
asterius. The wasps lay their eggs in the caterpillar out in the wild, and
there may be no visible external signs of parasitization. Nothing much you
can do aside from rearing your larvae indoors or in a cloth screen cage.
-- 
Doug Yanega
Illinois Natural History Survey, Center for Biodiversity
607 E. Peabody Dr. Champaign, IL 61820  USA
"There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is
    the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick