I’ve put the Painted lady (Vanessa cardui) in a rearing setup in house. The setup consisted of a seedling Common mallow (Malva sylvestris) from the garden. As the larva grew the plant was more and more stripped of it’s leaves so in the end I fed fresh leaves that were hung in the plant using  needles covered with cork.   

Unfortunately when looking at the photographs it turned out I had missed the second instar, and rearing started with the third instar. Based on the timestamps on all photographs I think what happend is that I’ve collected a different larva than the one photographed in the garden. There were two eggs relatively near each other in the original plant but I had not seen the second larva before.

3^rd INSTAR

4^th INSTAR

5^th INSTAR

PREPUPA

PUPA

ADULT

In the end the butterfly emerged. The rise to that occasion was a bit dumb, because I had looked inside the rearing cage and the pupa looked similar to the day before. Then I killed some time gaming but after an hour or something I heared some rustling. When I looked inside the cage there was the butterfly… it had hatched while I was gaming AAARGH 😤!!!

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Literature

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