Trail marking by caterpillars of the silverspot butterfly Dione juno huascuma
1Centro Universitario de Investigación y Desarrollo Agropecuario, Universidad de Colima, Tecomán 28100,
Colima, México
2Facultad de Estudios Superiores Iztacala, UNAM, Laboratorio de Zoología,
Tlanepantla 54090, Estado de México, México
3UNAM, Laboratorio de Zoología, Tlanepantla 54090, Estado de México, México
4Department of Biological Sciences, State University of New York at Cortland,
Cortland, NY, 13045, USA
Abstract
A pheromone is implicated in the trail marking behavior of caterpillars of the nymphalid silverspot butterfly, Dione juno huascuma (Reakirt) (Lepidoptera: Heliconiinae) that feed gregariously on Passiflora (Malpighiales: Passifloraceae) vines in Mexico. Although they mark pathways leading from one feeding site to another with silk, this study shows that the silk was neither adequate nor necessary to elicit trail following behavior. Caterpillars marked trails with a long-lived pheromone that was deposited when they brushed the ventral surfaces of the tips of their abdomens along branch pathways. The caterpillars distinguished between pathways deposited by different numbers of siblings and between trails of different ages. Caterpillars also preferentially followed the trails of conspecifics over those of another nymphalid, Nymphalis antiopa L., the mourning cloak butterfly.
Keywords: foraging behavior, Nymphalidae, silk, social caterpillar, trail pheromone
Correspondence:
a* apescado@yahoo.com,
b sstanford@campus.iztacala.unam.mx,
f fitzgerald@cortland.edu,*Corresponding author
Editor: Tugurl Giray was editor of this paper
Received: 15 February 2010 | Accepted: 22 March 2011 | Published: 25 April 2011
Copyright: This is an open access paper. We use the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license that permits unrestricted use, provided that the paper is properly attributed.
ISSN: 1536-2442 | Volume 11, Number 55
Pescador-Rubio A, Stanford-Camargo SG, Páez-Gerardo LE, Ramírez-Reyes AJ, Ibarra-Jiménez RA, Fitzgerald TD. 2011. Trail marking by caterpillars of the silverspot butterfly Dione juno huascuma. Journal of Insect Science 11:55 available online: insectscience.org/11.55
 Figure 1 |