What other larvae eat milkweed?

[ilsa]

I apologize if this has been asked and answered before, but I honestly wouldn't know what search strnig to use to find it.

Are there other types of butterflies or moths that eat milkweed leaves in their larval stage? I found two tiny cats on leaves I brought inside with eggs on them, and these two cats don't really look like Monarchs to me. They do have whitish bodies but they also seem to have reddish heads. I'm keeping them separately until they get big enough to identify. Is there another butterfly/moth that eats milkweed?

[ilsa]

I stand corrected. I looked again and they are actually not light-colored at all! They are dark and seem to have faint dark- and light-colored stripes lengthwise down their bodies.

Hmmm. Could it be Queen?

[Mona Miller]

http://www.pbase.com/tmurray74/image/35953830
Queen caterpillar photos.

It is possible. Look at the map on this website:
http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species?l=1893

Queens do eat milkweed. They have three sets of antenna (feelers).

A photographer friend of mine once photographed a Queen in Vienna, Virginia. They are considered strays in my area.

[applestar]

There's also the Milkweed Tussock Moth caterpillars.
In the past years, they have SWARMED my milkweeds. First time it happened, I was clueless and the armies stripped the milkweeds in my garden -- I had to go hunting milkweed for my cats later in the season

Last couple of years, I made sure to bag and discard mass hatchings of MTM's
This year, I've only found ones and twos of MTM's and those I just flung far away from my milkweeds. I reasoned that IF they make it back, then more power to them.

It's a good thing because the drought defoliated some of the plants in the driest part of my garden. They seemed fine, then all of a sudden, the bottom 18 inches or so of the leaves turned yellow and fell off in a matter of days.

[windrider]

Come to think of it, I didn't see any of the tussock moths this year. Normally I get a whole mess of them

[David Calhoun]

I had a ton of tussock moths.Also a few yellow bears,but the yellow bears don't devastate the garden, so I let them be.

[NickiM]

I was going to ask this same question. I've several cats on my milkweed--very small, fat green body and a brown stripe running lengthwise on their backs.

[Mona Miller]

This is the early stage of the tussock moth:
http://bugguide.net/node/view/433

I'm sure there's probably other moths that eat milkweed. But, they eat way too much. So I'm a meany and get rid of them.

[Mona Miller]

http://bugguide.net/index.php?q=search& ... rch=Search
Another thing that you can do is search on "milkweed" on bug guide. It is amazing how many things eat, rest on, lay on and then eat those that eat milkweed, eat milkweed as a host, nectar... milkweed.

[ilsa]

Well, I looked up the milkweed tussock moth and that's not what I have. I still have these guys. There are actually 3 of them, not 2. I still have them isolated in their own container and boy, do they eat slowly, at least compared to a Monarch cat! They're growing very slowly so I still can't get a very good picture of them with my camera. Here's the best I can do so far. It's probably some ugly moth and I'll be sorry I went to the trouble of midwifing them.

interloper1.jpg (19.04 KiB) Viewed 1214 times

[ilsa]

By the way, in the process of searching for pictures of my mystery larvae, I came across this fantastic collection of photos of the many caterpillars found in Massachusetts!
http://www.pbase.com/spjaffe/massachusetts_caterpillars