In my last post I wrote about the early instars of the American Lady (Vanessa virginiensis). I had intended to post more photos of the later instars, but they spend a lot of time inside their "nests," and I didnt want to open the nests and generate more work for them.

Sometimes the cats wandered out onto the leaves, but as a whole I saw them very seldom. I eventually became suspicious about the lack of apparent activity and opened one of the nestsÂ

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This cat has been parasitized; I donÂt know whether this occurred before I collected him, or whether the fly/wasp/whatever penetrated our screen porch and the tulle covering the container. I should have saved this to see what eventually hatched, but I discarded it, so if anyone at this forum can give me insight re the identity of the parasite, I would be quite interested.

The scene was replicated in a couple other nests, and a couple more were just empty, with no sign of the cat. I finally decided that some "skins" I had seen earlier and had assumed were shed during molting were probably desiccated bodies of parasitized cats.

Eventually two cats successfully formed their chrysalises on the tulle -

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I used a bit of dental floss to tie them to a stick for more stability. I was at first intrigued by the striking difference in color in the two chrysalises. IÂve seen variable color in BST chrysalises and thought this was natural variability  until I happened to turn the stick so that it was backlitÂ

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The pale chrysalis is obviously almost empty. That cat also had been parasitized, or at least had shriveled and died for some reason. That left me with just one chrysalis to complete this documentation of the cycle. I kept my fingers crossed.

As misssherry predicted, the chrysalis did turn quite dark one evening. The next morning I moved it to my breakfast table and kept it by my side while I started the NYT Sunday crossword. I was planning to get some pix of the eclosion, but it was of course silent and I was engrossed, so when I finished the puzzle and looked up, he/she already had the wings fully inflated -

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A closeup of her pattern beneath the wings shows the characteristic two eyespots and the delicate "cobweb" pattern in the proximal wing. The colors combine some beautiful shades of brown and sort of a russet and a subtle blue, -

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When she became restless I moved her to some rattan. Her resting pattern looked like this Â

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- and when I startled her with the camera she raised her forewing to display her hidden beautiful rose pattern. Maybe it was a coincidence that she did this when I got close to her, but it seemed as though she were using the rose spot for a sort of defensive purpose to "startle" a potential predator -

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This was within a couple hours of eclosion, so she was still docile enough to climb onto my finger and display her upper wing pattern when I put her in direct sunlight Â

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The American Lady is supposed to show a characteristic small white dot inside the large orange cell by the upper wing margin. This butterfly didnÂt have such a spot. After another hour or so in the sun she was ready to go, so I took her outside on the deck and she flew off over the treetops.

IÂve been calling this butterfly "she" because of her name, but to be honest I have no idea whether this is a male or a female; IÂd appreciate any information in that regard.

This completes the posts of the life cycle of the American Lady. It is quite a common butterfly, so I think the subtle beauty of its color pattern is sometimes underappreciated.

Perhaps I can do some other species later this summer.

stan