Butterflies lay their egg on host plants on which caterpillars can feed on after getting hatched and survive. Cubists have found Catterpillars on Phyllanthus as well as Cardamine plants.
A Caterpillar was found feeding on Phyllanthus plant by Sakshi, further on looking this Theertha also tried to feed her Caterpillar with Phyllanthus. We know that Butterflies are very specific to their host plants.
One of the caterpillar died after eating another Phyllanthus species.
Does species of leaf fed to caterpillar matter?
Really ! Whose caterpillar died due to eating other leaves…
From where did you get this information?
Please involve that cubist for verifying this
Experimental design of @sakshiconsultant2002 from Ratnam college.
The caterpillar was found on Phyllanthus urinaria plant.
The Caterpillar was tried feeding on phyllanthus branches, cabbage, and green peas. The caterpillar was alive for 15 days, and died after feeding it with green peas, we are yet to know why exactly caterpillar died?
The experiment shows caterpillar can be grown using phyllanthus, and phyllanthus is the host plant for caterpillar.
Besides this several questions came on cubists on stages of caterpillar, exoskeleton shedding of caterpillar, how do we know the caterpillar is male or female?
Cubists were not aware that caterpillar could mould and shed its exoskeleton.
This was a new observation for cubists. Another question was for how many times caterpillar will mould? @Theertha shared her observation that she had seen caterpillar shedding exoskeleton two times, for growing in size.
@SaraKalamudeen added that we are not able to identify male and female at caterpillar stage as they look similar, only in adult butterfly stage we can identify male or female.
Looks like, Sakshi of CUBE Ratnam College, Mumbai got another caterpillar from the batch of Phyllanthus plants during her practical examination. @jaikishan @Himanshu, Can we get Sakshi and @Theertha to talk about that?
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@sakshiconsultant2002 please share your exciting story about caterpillar from phyllanthus plant during practical exams