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I am breeding speckled wood and all my caterpillars are beginning to pupate (images to come soon). Now what I want to know, is what to do with the pupae? Let them hatch to adults or hibernate them? This is not local speckled woods, so I am not releasing them. I have everything set up for adults with flowers and grass for the foodplant. I am at the moment recording a caterpillar pupating with my video camera and will post a video link when I get and make video of it.

Any suggestions?

Hi Dave,

I believe that Speckled Wood can be continuously brooded in captivity - but that's a lot of hard work since you'll need to set up some lighting and heating equipment. The easiest thing to do, by far, is let them overwinter as larvae or pupae.

Cheers,

- Pete

Thanks, I'll overwinter them as pupae as I have 20 of them and don't want anything to mess up, and by the time to let the adults hatch, I'll have everything ready to breed them properly.

Its only been only a few days since the caterpillars stared pupating, since I posted last post above and they are ready to hatch out (or starting to look ready), now is this the right size for a speckled wood pupae, It looks rather small to me? I showed it beside a 2p coin to get an idea of what size it is (I think the pupaes supposed to be arond 18mm or something, but this one is only about 10mm or so, unless I measured it wrong):



since I can't exactly can't put them into hibernation now, I have the grass ready for them. Whats the best thing to feed the adults on?

This is definitely very small - usually a sign of an underfed larva.

Something like buddleia would be good for the adults - supplemented with a sugar/water mix (ratio 1:25) provided via cotton wool pads.

Cheers,

- Pete

did the pupae hatch, dave or are they overwintering?

It was a bit late to overwinter them, they just started to hatch, I'll post some pics later. I think I have one male. That one I posted the pic of there, I went to check on it a day or so after posting that and UGH! It was jst a bag of brown mush and smelled really awful. I have 6 in total, so not sure if I can breed them, have to see what hatches out.

Here is a male with wings closed. I can't seem to get them when they have wings open:



I also have a female is hatching out (or near to)

In aegeria subspecies, is the male yellowish and the female have orange markings or is it the other way around?

Hi Dave,

The Speckled Wood is one of those species (like the Large Heath) that shows a "cline" - a gradual change in physical features based on geography. For Speckled Wood, the further north, the paler the spots. So the cline is (north to south):

ssp. oblita (Scotland)
ssp. tircis (England)
ssp. insula (Isles of Scilly)
ssp. aegeria (central Europe)

Sounds like you have ssp. aegeria.

Cheers,

- Pete