Reptile & Amphibian Forums

im not having much luck with my rearing this year. managed to get some deaths head hawk moth eggs a while ago. they hatched and seemed ok for a while, feeding on privet. after a while half of them started wandering around, not feeding much and stopped growing at 2nd instar. when i spotted this i seperated them into different containers and 3 larvae grew faster to about half size but now have now also started wandering around and not eating much. i have been very careful with keeping everything clean, have tried keeping them in jars of unenclosed cut food and in containers but they still wander about. i wish they would just get it over with and die to be honest, its pissing me off! i dont have any trouble with other h moth larvae. im wondering if they are just inbred or something as i bought some from the same source last year and they never even hatched. can anyone recommend a supplier of healthy stock or give me tips on these moths. cheers

Hi there,

I know it's been some time since you posted this and don't know how you fared with them. I personally have not raised these as they are not native to the US and have not read about any trouble rearing. Have you tried the UK forums? I am not sure if I can give you a direct link here so I will email you, but if you do a search for UK Lepidoptera forum you will find links. I know in PBM Allan's book (he's a British author of several Moth books and a delight to read!) he talks of the larva of some other hawkmoths wandering around in order to orient themselves to the sun and would rather starve if not given proper light. he does not say this about A. atropos, but who knows. He wrote back in the 40's and we now know that sun is important to stave of many Lep pathogens. Anyway, try some of the UK folks and see if they can be helpful and maybe get you some stock as well. if you find out anything interesting let us know!

lele

>>im not having much luck with my rearing this year. managed to get some deaths head hawk moth eggs a while ago. they hatched and seemed ok for a while, feeding on privet. after a while half of them started wandering around, not feeding much and stopped growing at 2nd instar. when i spotted this i seperated them into different containers and 3 larvae grew faster to about half size but now have now also started wandering around and not eating much. i have been very careful with keeping everything clean, have tried keeping them in jars of unenclosed cut food and in containers but they still wander about. i wish they would just get it over with and die to be honest, its pissing me off! i dont have any trouble with other h moth larvae. im wondering if they are just inbred or something as i bought some from the same source last year and they never even hatched. can anyone recommend a supplier of healthy stock or give me tips on these moths. cheers

thanks for advice and links to those forums. the deaths heads did die in the end, presumably due to a weird infection. they are one of the most spectacular hawk moth species and would presumably be quite commonly reared if theres wasnt some kind of common rearing issue. and they are virtually unavailable so probably others are having difficulties. they seem quite similar to other large hawk moths like the privet hawk moth in general appearance and these present no similar difficulties to me when raised in a similar way. i have searched around and found nobody else with a problem, in fact theres an article on the web by a neil west which says they are 'an easy species to rear'. i dont think they are a basking species like the spurge hawk moth which has warning colouration as protection, in fact i think the like to hide during the day under leaves and soil - i think he raises them in the dark. so i still reckon they get an infection; ive heard this can be transitted in some cases from the moth to egg. the crawling around habit could be because the bacteria changes the behaviour of the caterpillar from sedentary to active therefore potentially infecting other larvae scattered some distance away. an other idea is they are very temperature sensitive, and fail at anything less than 20c. this doesnt explain the wandering though, and you would expect them to slow down instead, and they can be found wild in the uk which means they tolorate low temperatures. mystery.