Nature biographies; the lives of some every-day butterflies; moths; grasshoppers and flies . wdiat ways does the shelter tent protect this cater-pillar from its host of living enemies ? It greatly re-duces the period of exposure to the attacks of predaceousbeetles: some of the larger species of these — notably 32 The American Tent Caterpillar. the caterpillar hunters of the genus Calosoma — wouldbe likely to devour any caterpillars which they cameacross in their wanderings, but they would not be likelyto enter the tent for them. It also prevents, to a consid-erable extent, the attacks of many
Nature biographies; the lives of some every-day butterflies; moths; grasshoppers and flies . wdiat ways does the shelter tent protect this cater-pillar from its host of living enemies ? It greatly re-duces the period of exposure to the attacks of predaceousbeetles: some of the larger species of these — notably 32 The American Tent Caterpillar. the caterpillar hunters of the genus Calosoma — wouldbe likely to devour any caterpillars which they cameacross in their wanderings, but they would not be likelyto enter the tent for them. It also prevents, to a consid-erable extent, the attacks of many birds, although not allof them. And it makes the attacks of wasps and para-sites more difficult during the moulting periods. But the tent is by no means a comi^lete safecruard r against all birds, like thecuckoos and the Bal-timore oriole, havelearned to make holesin the web, and to tearout the larvcc concealedwithin, while some ich-neumon flies appear tohave learned how toenter the nest for thepurpose of depositingtheir eggs. It has just been saidthat the Baltimore ori-. FiG. 41. — Caterpillars killed by Disease. ole and the cuckoos feed upon these larv^. In Figure40 a nest is shown in which holes have been made byone of these birds for the purpose of extracting the cat-erpillars. The orioles are more likely simply to piercethe skin of the caterpillar and to extract some of the bodycontents, while the cuckoos swallow the insect the stomach of the black-billed cuckoo dozens ofthese caterpillars have been found. This difference in manner of feeding may help todetermine whether a ^ 33 given caterpillars nest has been Nature Biographies. raided by oriole or cuckoo. If there are many dead andmutilated larv^ on the branches near the tent, it wasprobably an oriole. If the caterpillars are gone, andthere are no such remains, it was probably a cuckoo. There is one sort of danger, however, to which thecolonial lives of these tent caterpillars render them pe-c
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectinsects, bookyear1901
