Transformations: Which Caterpillar Becomes Which Butterfly?
The United Nations has coined 2010 to be The International Year of Biodiversity, so it’s only fitting that insects play a starring role in the pages of our summer issue. Insects, after all, are the most abundant animals on earth. While some species can be overlooked, due to their small size or out-of-the-way lifestyles, butterflies and caterpillars cannot. These veritable pop stars of the insect world - dolled up in coiffed hair tufts and shimmering wing scales - simply demand attention.
As any third-grader will tell you, Lepidoptera - the order of insects that includes butterflies and caterpillars - represent peak evolution in the cool-animal department. Sure, dogs and cats are great, but to even compete for the crown, Fido would have to shed his skin five or six times, then void his bowels, fashion himself a cocoon, digest his larval tissues and organs, and reemerge from the cocoon a few weeks later as a giant bird.
While the image of literal mammalian metamorphosis is silly, a philosophical interpretation is not. The human concept of redemption - this idea that we can change for the better - can be read into the caterpillar-to-butterfly progression. It’s no coincidence, then, that humans are attracted to butterfly totems, to tattoos and bejeweled winged amulets that rest against caterpillar-silk blouses. It’s no coincidence, then, that Hollywood filmmakers make hay here in the light version of human metamorphosis - the streetwalker-gone-good motif - and the dark side - the soul of great beauty who, like a butterfly, just can’t bring him- or herself to fly straight.
The influence that butterflies/caterpillars have on humans goes far beyond art and philosophy. In the world of raw economics, butterfly collectors still pay hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for rare specimens. Farmers and foresters engage in epic battles with tree- and plant-munching larvae. One degree separate, but no less influential, is our human dependence on the relationship between caterpillars and plants. The aspirin you take for headaches is derived from salicylic acid, a plant compound that’s produced to thwart caterpillars. The coffee you may be drinking as you read this takes its bitter flavor from the same.
Back to square one now, the basic question that confronts every amateur naturalist when they gaze upon a caterpillar is: what kind of butterfly or moth will this become? You may know what a woolly bear looks like, but how about an Isabella tiger moth - the woolly bear’s adult form? Secondary questions include, what kind of food do they eat? And are they harmful if I touch them?
To answer these questions, we enlisted the help of photographer Gerry Lemmo and compiled photos of some of the most common caterpillars, and their subsequent butterflies or moths, that you’ll find in the Northeast. For more advanced studies, we’d suggest David L. Wagner’s Caterpillars of Eastern North America - an exceptional field guide - and Butterflies of the East Coast; An Observers Guide, by Rick Cech and Guy Tudor.
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