Black stuff inside chrysalis-any ideas

[MeganPalmCity]

Does anyone have any idea what this was in/on these two chrysalds?At first I thought it might be OE, but after doing some research, don't think it was.
I had 12 chrysalids, these two looked abnormal, so I removed them. The others are all fine.
Thanks, Megan
<img src="http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a83/pieceofparadise/OE.jpg" alt="Image hosted by Photobucket.com">

[img]<img%20src="http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a83/pieceofparadise/OE.jpg"%20alt="Image%20hosted%20by%20Photobucket.com">[/img]

[MeganPalmCity]

[Keith Petrosky]

It just looks like there forming into butterflys. The darker they get, the closer they are to hatching. Thats what I think.

[Pat]

What a shame, but I think they're dying. I had that happen to me last year, lost almost half of what appeared to be perfectly healthy cats -- each one made a beautiful chrysalis, but 4 or 5 days later it would be streaked inside with brown in the wrong places while the rest was still green.

Don't know what kind of disease or parasite they had, but in a few more days they had all turned to a brown mush inside the chrysalis. I suspect it was something getting into their food plants, maybe a virus or some chemicals; some of my neighbors spray.

[John Beaulieu]

They do look unusual - not the normal darkening that occurs as we start to see wing colour showing through. Let us know what happens to them.

Out of the 60 or so chryalis that we have had this year, one turned black very early and started to shrivel up. We could see no cause. We also had a caterpillar not make it through the final shedding after J-hooking. Things happen.

Some years we have seen chrysalis (in the wild) turn black after an early frost. Of course that is not a worry at this time of year. We have never seen these streaked markings.

[John Beaulieu]

Upon a closer look at my photo of the caterpillar that died just as the chrysalis was starting to shed the last skin, I see that there might be similar brown marks on this chrysalis.

( other photos at http://photobucket.com/albums/a240/JohnBeaulieu/ )

[Teresa]

It looks like Im going to loose two Does it effect the others that are heathy, does it spread?

[Pat]

If it's a polyhedrosis virus, you have to get rid of the chrysalides (not near your milkweeds!) and move the other cats to a clean dry container, with all new food, or it will spread. Polyhedrosis viruses are used for biological caterpillar control instead of spraying, like for getting rid of cabbage loopers or gypsy moths. The caterpillars that ingest them will eventually turn brown with their guts liquefied, making it easy for the virus to spread. I read that it's contagious enough that an infected adult male can transmit it to its chosen female, who can transmit it to her eggs.

You can't do anything for the cats that may already have eaten contaminated food or otherwise come in contact with it, they will all get those brown splotches (something about the viruses making crystalline structures out of the caterpillar's body) and die, either as cats or in the chrysalis. The few articles I've read about this indicate that it's always fatal and that new cats can also get infected just by coming into contact with the leavings of an infected one.

Univ. of Minnesota has a site with some pictures of polyhedrosis infection, they call it "black death."
Monarchlab Parasite Page

Good luck.

[MeganPalmCity]

Since I posted the pics of the two odd looking chrysalids (which I flushed ) I have had two more fail to pupate properly. Two cats attached,went in to J, then apparently were infected with something, and turned to gook half way between cat and chrys. The remains were a sad genetic mush of caterpillar and chrysalis..the part of the cat nearest the cremaster was still caterpillar, the bottom half was the beginning of the bright green chrys. I am soooo bummed.

I am taking a break from raisng Monarchs. The screen tent I have been using for the last two months is getting hosed with bleach. In late September, if I have any Monarchs here at all, will be raised in sterlized, individual bug cups. It makes me absolutley ill that the one deformed one-wings were so misshaped, she barely looked like the regal Monarch- I had back in June may have been the start of this.

60 adults released to date, 8 casualties..is that a bad ratio?

I know we have a large resident population in Florida. May be the ones i brought in to raise had too much inbreeding? I wish I knew.

Megan

[Pat]

I have about 200 being reared at present and I've lost 4 like that this year. Since the eggs can be infected to start with, there's no stopping it completely if you're raising eggs collected from the wild. All you can do is segregate the healthy from the infected and sterilize your containers again and again.

[Teresa]

So far i've lost 3 crys and 2 cats. I found 2 cats on the bottom of the cage about 1 inch long. The crys were getting black/brown patches and liquified. My problem is time. I work 10 hour days and just barely get home in time to release them. This weekend i'm taking all of them out and disenfecting the cage. I hope that helps because i'm getting worried about all the other crys on top already there. I need about 3 more cages. One for 1st 2nd instars, inbetween ones, big ones and a flight cage. My husband will kill me because now I want half the garage.

[Pat]

What I'd like is a sunroom -- hot tub for me & hubby, extra space for the butterflies. It's raining here again and I've got 8 of them on the dining room table drying their wings, they're hanging from K'Nex racks my son made for them.

[MILW]

We're going to have a screen porch built in a week or two, finally the cats and chrysalids can move off the dining room table much to my wifes relief!

I used to work with baculoviruses (polyhedrosis virus) and I'm wondering if there's any way to collect some samples from your dead/dying cats and chrysalids. hm, I'd have to send you a sterile tube to put their little bodies in. I haven't had any die of infection yet, just the cat knocking the chrysalis down or else leaping up and getting the adults trying to fly away (bad cat!).

Please let me know if you have any others starting to turn brown or sickly, if you wouldn't mind?

cheers- Scott

[Teresa]

I'm still finding them here and there. They turn black after they die. Does that tell you anything?

[Pat]

Bacteria? Check out the "black death" photos... when I occasionally lose a cat, it would be looking just like that, almost all blackened and limp.
Monarchlab Parasite Page
I isolate any cats I find in the gardens from the ones I know I've reared from eggs. The garden ones I used to find seemed more likely to be unhealthy; for instance, a couple weeks ago my son found a good-looking 4th instar sitting on top of one of the dog's tennis balls which had rolled into the gardens. It was only 6" away from a nice group of tropical asclepias which I found a little suspicious, it should have been hiding under the leaves. I gave it its own container and plenty of fresh food, but it turned dark and shrivelled and died within a few days.

[Megathymus ursus]

This is almost definitely a disease (some chance it could be a toxicity process). I have lost many monarch pupae to a similar process myself--I am battling some ferocious disease in my rearing quarters that causes the pupae (never the larvae) of swallowtails, danaids, giant skippers, and sometimes gulf fritillaries to turn spotty black and hollow out internally. (Buckeyes and small checkerspots seem immune.) Some of my sick pupae have resembled those pictures.

If the pupae are turning solid black and getting juicy, that is the polyhedrosis virus. If not... your guess is as good as mine.