Yellow woolly bear
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| Spilosoma virginica | ||||||||||||||||||
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 White Variant (larva)
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Not evaluated (IUCN 3.1)
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| Spilosoma virginica Fabricius (1798) |
The Yellow woolly bear caterpillar, Spilosoma virginica, is the larva of the Virginia tiger moth. It has a diet of a wide range of low-growing plants, including ground cover like grass and clover. This species tends to have two to three life cycles per year, with one hibernating for the winter in temperate climates.
[edit] Identification
The caterpillar varies in color, but is typically consistent in its coloration in a single specimen, without odd tufts of different-colored hair or separately colored heads.
The adult moth tends to tent its wings over its back, rather than sitting with them spread. It is white with a darker-colored abdomen, but without the obvious, darker eyes of its close cousin the agreeable tiger moth. It will die if it is near foliage that has just gone through photosynthesis for too long. It is also very poisonous.
[edit] Reproduction
The female is slightly larger than the male in larva form, and as an adult finds a mate by extruding an organ that emits a pheromone which the male can smell. The male, which unlike the female has the large, feathered antennae characteristic of pheromone-using moths, flies zigzag search patterns, eventually homing in on a female. After mating, he goes off to find other females, while the female stops to lay between 20 and 100 eggs in a single layer on the underside of a leaf. The larvae stay together when very young, but become solitary as they gain size.
[edit] See also
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