Question about proboscis

[dannus plex]

My daughter and I were watching one of our reared Monarchs emerge this morning and I notice two proboscis while the wings were expanding. She stated that she has seen this before, and that they merge into one. Is this so?

[psi_chemie]

Yes - it's two halves of a straw, and the zip together to make the straw.

[Gwynne]

How long does this take? I have seen proboscises that are split several hours after the butterflies emerge, sometimes even the next day. I thought they were supposed to zip within a couple of hours.

[psi_chemie]

With mine, I have always seen that right after emerging, they:

1 pump up their wings (takes about 10 minutes or so)
2 zip their proboscis (seems to be done by the time their wings are inflated)
3 their antannae go from pointing back to pointing foward (about an hour or two)
4 they start crawling around and opening and closing their wings (also about an hour or two)
5 they make their first attempts at flight several hours after emergine
6 after about 12 hours or the next day after emerging, they're bouncing off the walls and really want out

Any of these steps could be delayed, inhibited, or totally prevented, by weakness caused by parisitisim.

[Gwynne]

Does the weakness have to be caused by parisitism? Can it be caused by inbreeding or something else? And by parasites, are you talking about OE? Obviously if there is a tachinid fly, the butterfly wont emerge. I heard OE referred to as a parasite recently and had thought that only insects were parasites. As I read more I realize I have so much more to learn.

[psi_chemie]

Yes, I mean things like OE, or possibly others diseases caused by different types of viruses and microbes. Not everything is known about diseases in monarchs/butterflies (or humans, for that matter, where we spend trillions on trying to know).

If your collecting from wild, you won't get inbreeding. If you have pesticide problems, the larvae would never make it to pupa.

It really sounds like you've had tachinid + other parisitism (microbial, maybe OE).

Next year, try a couple batches of maybe six or so eggs, each batch from a different part of the county in which you live. Keep them isolated and feed each batch a different kind of live milkweed. Keep the whole plant(s), eggs, and larvae inside a screened enclosure with no other insects present. I almost guarantee you will not have so many deaths this way. Don't try and keep to many larvae in the same small volume of space. Also, don't keep the cage in a damp, musty environment.

I don't mean to sound like a know-it-all, I'm definately not. But this is what I have been doing for the 2nd year now, with 100% health rate.

You'll have better luck next year!

[dannus plex]

Thanks "psi" and the others for the info. Gwynne is right. There is so much to learn.

[Gwynne]

Yes thank you.

[donnap27]

i see this is a topic from 2006, but assume it's still 'open'
soooo, if it doesn't zip right away, is there anything we can do to help?
if it doesn't zip, it can't eat, right?

[Mona Miller]

I had a friend who sprayed her butterfly with a bit of water and also took a toothpick and exercised the proboscis. Usually, they have this zipped together before their wings are completely inflated. She said it took three days for it to zip it together, but she was amazed that it finally was able to get it zipped. I would recommend taking a q-tip and putting it in some gatorade and trying to put that to its proboscis to see if it can feed. They may not feed for up to 2 days after they emerge. I've gotten some of my butterflies to feed after one day.