WILTON — Kandi Karkos has been feeding and studying luna moths this summer after seeing a pair mating while at a youth baseball game in Auburn in June.
“I happened to see the pair on a red pine tree,” said the certified forestry therapy guide who loves nature. “I have been taking a naturalist class.”
A male luna moth has wider antennae and longer tail than females. Kandi Karkos photo
Karkos knew the moths only live a few weeks as adults.
“They can’t eat, can’t drink,” she said. “So, I was like ‘OK, I can use these for my class.’ I put them in a shoe box, took them home, they laid eggs. I wondered if the eggs would hatch and sure enough, they did.”
The male moth has wider antennae and longer tails than the female, Karkos noted. “They flutter the tails around to keep bats from eating them. It messes with their echolocation I think.”
After the moths mate, the female goes to trees to lay her tiny eggs.
Karkos provided a maple leaf where the moth laid eggs. The last group was blue – perhaps indicating they weren’t fertilized or the moth was too old at that time, she said.
“My mentor in the naturalist class said, ‘You don’t usually find a mating pair,'” she said. “It was meant to be.”
The fertile eggs hatched June 19, 16 days after she found the pair in Auburn. She has been feeding and watching them ever since.
“Luna moth caterpillars in the north particularly like birch leaves so I have been giving them gray birch leaves,” she said. “The survival rate has been very good.”
The mouths of two luna moth caterpillars are shown, along with the feet from one of them. Kandi Karkos photo
Karkos uses a spray bottle to keep the caterpillars a little moist.
She has been photographing and keeping notes on them.
The caterpillars go through five instar stages. As they eat and grow they molt, leaving behind an exuvia that is similar to a molted snake skin, she said. They are bright green, become darker before they molt and turn yellowish-brown before pupating.
“The caterpillar will quite often eat the exuvia to get the protein and nutrients in it,” Karkos noted. “When they eat leaves, they eat everything down to the mid-vein. They don’t waste anything.”
The caterpillars ‘breathe’ through little lines along their sides called spiracles. They typically take four to six weeks to pupate or form their cocoon, she said.
“The cocoons are different than some moths in that the caterpillars wrap silk around themselves, then wrap themselves in leaves,” Karkos said. “They grab a leaf, hook themselves to it. Normally they drop to the ground. Other cocoons hang from something.”
Inside the cocoon, the oval-shaped pupa has what appears to be a hard, brown shell.
“I was sitting here, doing some work,” she said. “I asked myself, ‘What is that noise?’ I kept looking, didn’t see anything moving, then saw it was one of the cocoons.”
A luna moth caterpillar begins to molt. The skin left behind is called exuvia. Kandi Karkos photo
In more southern climates the adult moths can emerge the same year they form cocoons, but in the North they overwinter and emerge the following year, Karkos said.
She plans to put some cocoons in a safe place outside where mice or other creatures won’t get them and bring some of them back inside to study further.
Karkos has given some cocoons to others interested in studying luna moths. In return, she was gifted a Monarch caterpillar and is observing that too.
“It is quite interesting,” she said. “It has been fascinating to watch.”
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