Have you ever stumbled across a caterpillar and wondered what kind of adult moth or butterfly it would metamorphose into?

Short of catching the caterpillar and actually observing what adult it becomes, this answer might be harder to come by than you might think. Most taxonomy and identification has been performed on the adults of various Lepidopteran species, and there are still many species whose caterpillar forms are not readily known.

This is particularly true for many Australian species whose early life stages remain a scientific mystery.

Dr. Don Herbison-Evans hopes to shed some light on these Australian larval mysteries through the website Australian Caterpillars and their Butterflies and Moths, which is hosted by the Coffs Harbour Butterfly House in New South Whales, Australia.

Dr. Don Herbison-Evans.

Dr. Herbison-Evans has professional experience in a variety of scientific disciplines, including information technology and computer science, astronomy, and chemistry. His interest in entomology, however, was sparked when he emigrated from the UK to Sydney to start his academic career in the 1960s. He and good friend Dr. Stella A. Crossley (who also emigrated from the UK to Melbourne around the same time to lecture in the Psychology Department at Monash University) were fascinated by the number of caterpillar species they found in their gardens.

“I remember taking one beastie to the enquiries desk at the Australian Museum, and asking what species it was,” recalled Don. “The lady there laughed, and then explained that most of the taxonomy of Australian Lepidoptera was done by entomologists at the British Museum on dried adult specimens sent back to the UK by Joseph Banks and other British explorers, so the entomologists had no idea what the early life stages, such as the caterpillars, were like.”

Thus, Don and Stella started photographing the caterpillars they found and rearing them into adults to discover their mature counterparts. In an effort to share what they discovered, they wrote a manuscript entitled 100 Common Australian Caterpillars, but unfortunately, publishers’ interest in caterpillars in the 1970s was virtually nonexistent. So Don and Stella shelved the manuscript.

And then, some twenty years later, along came the Internet.

“We were encouraged as univerisity staff to put potted biographies of ourselves on the web for students to know more about us, and of course we included a note in ours that we were interested in caterpillars,” explained Don. “We then got increasing numbers of people sending descriptions and photos of caterpillars asking what they were. So we said: ‘OK let’s just put our book on the web.'”

And so Australian Caterpillars and their Butterflies and Moths was born. The website contains webpages for over 3,600 Australian Lepidopteran species (having grown from an original 100). These webpages include descriptive information about the species as well as, where available, images of the adult and caterpillar forms. The pages are grouped according to family, and these pages are linked via a single page for moths and another for butterflies.

Example of BHL image in Australian Caterpillars and their Butterflies and Moths. Hesperilla bifasciata species page.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library serves as an excellent source of information for the website.

“BHL has enabled me to add historical richness to my popular descriptions of the biology of the Lepidoptera of Australia,” stated Don.

Using BHL everyday, Don searches for references to species of interest in BHL using our taxonomic name finding tool. If this does not yield results, he searches the OCR of likely journal issues for genus or species names. He then links these pages to relevant content in the website. Where illustrations are available in BHL, these are also uploaded to the corresponding species pages. These illustrations, which offer an interesting juxtaposition to modern photographs, are, in fact, Don’s favorite feature on BHL.

Example of BHL image in Australian Caterpillars and their Butterflies and Moths. Diduga flavicostata species page.

In addition to information about specific species, the website also provides some pretty incredible facts about caterpillars. For example, did you know that caterpillars have thousands of muscles, whereas humans only have about 500? Or that the female moths of the Australian species such as Teia anartoides have no wings, and the species disperses by the young caterpillars making an open gossamer sail out of silk, and sailing away on it in the wind?

Teia anartoides young caterpillars ballooning (Photo: courtesy of Rudie Kuiter, Aquatic Photographics, Victoria). http://lepidoptera.butterflyhouse.com.au/lyma/anart.html.

The website has become an incredible resource for those interested in exploring Australian Lepidoptera. Don particularly hopes that it will help spark an interest in these insects among younger audiences.

“Our idea in the webpages is to help, particularly young Australian people, understand and value the unique entomological heritage to which they are heirs, and to foster an understanding of how to preserve that heritage for future generations,” Don explained. “The webpages try to be chatty and intriguing to, say, an intelligent 12 year old, but to include enough technical information to tempt them deeper into the ecology and taxonomy of Australian Lepidoptera. With the help of the Biodiversity Heritage Library and Wikipedia, we are able to link the current descriptions of the biology of the species to the original descriptions from two or more centuries ago and to biographies of their authors who can be seen to have been real people, who too were intensely interested in Australian fauna. I think this helps establish the idea in our readers that these organisms have perhaps as much right to live in Australia as they do, and that our living biological heritage can be preserved and maintained, just as [BHL] preserves our literary and scientific heritage.”

We think the website is well on its way to achieving this goal. After all, what young person wouldn’t want to learn more about a caterpillar that can fire fecal pellets from its anus?

Thanks very much to Dr. Herbison-Evans for sharing his work and use of BHL with us. Be sure to explore Australian Caterpillars and their Butterflies and Moths today.

Do you use BHL regularly for your work? Want to be featured on our blog? Send a message to [email protected].

How could you make a visual record of a collection before the advent of photography? Through illustrations, of course. It was a desire to produce just such a record that prompted the creation of the magnificent plates accompanying De uitlandsche kapellen voorkomende in de drie waereld-deelen, Asia, Africa en America ([1775]-1782), by Pieter Cramer, which has been digitized for BHL by Mann Library, Cornell University.

De uitlandsche kapellen voorkomende in de drie waereld-deelen, Asia, Africa en America. [1775]-1782. Digitized by Mann Library, Cornell University. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42111657.

Pieter Cramer was a wealthy linen and wool merchant from Amsterdam. Born in 1721, he had a keen interest in natural history – particularly Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths). Through purchase and trade, Cramer amassed a large collection of Lepidoptera specimens from Suriname, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), Indonesia, North America, Africa, and Asia. Cramer hired Amsterdam artist Gerrit Wartenaar to illustrate his collection in order to make a permanent record of it. The resulting hand-colored plates were so magnificent that Cramer was encouraged to publish them. He did so via De uitlandsche kapellen, which includes 400 plates featuring 1,658 moth and butterfly species, each accompanied by a brief description of the antennal shape and wing pattern. The plates and text were published in thirty-four parts between 1775-82, with one issue being sent out to a list of subscribers every three months. The final work consists of four volumes.

De uitlandsche kapellen voorkomende in de drie waereld-deelen, Asia, Africa en America. [1775]-1782. Digitized by Mann Library, Cornell University. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42111331.

Sadly, Cramer died of a fever in 1776, before the first volume was complete. His nephew and business partner, Anthony Wellemzoon van Rensselaar, enlisted the help of Caspar Stoll (who had been involved in the production of the first volume) to complete the final volumes. Stoll wrote most of the text for volume four, and, between 1787-90, published a supplement to the work that included forty-two plates of 250 additional species.

De uitlandsche kapellen voorkomende in de drie waereld-deelen, Asia, Africa en America. [1775]-1782. Digitized by Mann Library, Cornell University. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42111247.

De uitlandsche kapellen is important for a number of reasons. It depicts each species at life-size and illustrates both the upper and lower wings for each. It was also the first treatise on Lepidoptera to use the newly-introduced classification system from Carl Linnaeus. Cramer and Stoll assigned each butterfly and moth to one of the three then-existing Lepidopteran genera (designated by Linnaeus) – today there are thousands of genera for butterflies and moths. In providing scientific names to the species, they not only used any existing binomials for the specimens included in the work, but, as many of the species had not yet been named, they also assigned a name and provided the first formal scientific description for many species depicted in the volumes. As a result, De uitlandsche kapellen contains hundreds of “original descriptions” and as such is still integral to the work of scientists today.

De uitlandsche kapellen voorkomende in de drie waereld-deelen, Asia, Africa en America. [1775]-1782. Digitized by Mann Library, Cornell University. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42111073.

You can explore De uitlandsche kapellen voorkomende in de drie waereld-deelen, Asia, Africa en America (1779-1782), by Pieter Cramer, for free in BHL, digitized by Mann Library, Cornell University Library. You can view the illustrations in this work on Flickr: Pts. 1-2 | Pts. 3-4.

Source: James, Miller. “The Volumes of Cramer and Stoll: A Timeless Contribution to the Science of Butterflies and Moths.” Natural Histories. New York: American Museum of Natural History, 2012. 57-58. Print.

Happy Moth Week! National Moth Week is an annual event that celebrates the diversity and magnificence of moths. By partnering with online biological databases, National Moth Week encourages everyone to become a citizen scientist by helping map moth distributions and provide information about these amazing species.

BHL is celebrating moth week by highlighting select species gleaned from one of our favorite BHL books: Butterflies and Moths: Shown to the Children (1910), by Janet Harvey Kelman, with descriptions by Rev. Theodore Wood.

Satisfy all your moth curiosity with free moth images from BHL in our Flickr Moth Collection and books on moths in BHL. Learn more about Moth Week and find out how you can get involved.

http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42193530

Death’s Head Hawk (Acherontia atropos)
There are three species of Death’s Head Hawk moths, but the European species is the best known. Characterized by the skull-shaped markings on its thorax, these are very large moths, with wingspans of 3.5-5 inches. The moth is capable of “squeaking” vocalizations, and commonly raids beehives for honey. By mimicking the scent of bees, it is able to prowl through the hives unmolested.

The moth’s association with death extends to its name. The genus name, Acherontia, is derived from the river Acheron in Greek mythology – one of the five rivers of the underworld associated with pain. The species name, atropos, comes from the name of one of the Greek Moirai, goddesses of fate and destiny.

Fun Quote from Butterflies and Moths
“And if you meet with [the Death’s Head Hawk], and pick it up, you will be surprised to find that it can squeak quite loudly! Stranger still, the chrysalis can squeak too, and so can the moth ! Indeed, if you pick up a Death’s Head Hawk Moth it will go on squeaking very much like a mouse all the time that you hold it in your hand!” (pg 39)

http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42193554

Wood Leopard (Zeuzera pyrina) 
Though found primarily in Europe and northern Africa, the Wood Leopard was introduced to America prior to 1879 and can now be found from Maine to Pennsylvania. With a wingspan measuring from just over 1 to just over 2 inches, this species boasts a distinctive, fury white thorax with six black spots and Dalmatian-esque black and white wings.

Fun Quote from Butterflies and Moths
“You may sometimes see [the Wood Leopard] resting on the trunks of trees in July and August. Then, if you examine the tree-trunk carefully, you are almost sure to find the entrance to the burrow out of which it came; for the caterpillar of this moth is one of those which feed on the solid wood of trees. The female moth lays her eggs in the crevices of the bark, and as soon as the little caterpillars appear they nibble their way into the trunk with their powerful jaws, and there live for several months, burrowing backwards and forwards, day after day, till sometimes the wood is almost honeycombed with their tunnels.” (pg 50)

http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42193610

The Puss Moth (Cerura vinula)
Found throughout Europe, North Africa, and temperate Asia, the Puss Moth has a 2-3 inch wingspan and feeds on willows and poplars. With a flight period extending from April to August, the pupa winters the cold months in a wood-reinforced cocoon. The light green caterpillar exhibits a defensive pose that involves rearing its bright-red head and extendable flagellae on its rear (as seen in illustration). If a predator fails to regard this warning, the caterpillar will squirt formic acid.  

Fun Quote from Butterflies and Moths
“This fine and handsome moth is called the ‘Puss,’ because, when its wings are closed, it looks rather like a brindled cat. And there are two or three smaller moths which are a good deal like it; so these are known as ‘Kittens.'” (pg 79).

http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42193628

The Old Lady (Mormo Maura)
Found throughout northwestern Africa and Europe, the “Old Lady” or “Black Underwing” moth measures about 2-2.5 inches in wingspan. Found mostly near water, it hides by day and is not particularly attracted to light. It is, however, attracted to sugar, and feeds on the leaves of various fruit trees.   

Fun Quote from Butterflies and Moths
“If you were to ask me why this moth should be called the ‘Old Lady,’ I am not quite sure that I could tell you. But I think the reason must be that old ladies mostly dress in dark grey, or dark brown, or black, which are just the colours of the wings of the moth.” (pg 88)

Be sure to check out Butterflies and Moths: Shown to the Children in BHL for more fabulous moth (and butterfly) facts and images. Don’t forget to find out how you can become a citizen scientist as part of Moth Week this week!

Privet Hawk Moth (Sphinx ligustri), which will hiss at you if you make him mad. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42193534