death of common mormon

[dude83]

hey guys, i need some help here... recently i just adopted 6 common mormon, all manage to pupate sucessfully into huge pupas, coz i fed lotsa curry leaves, the leaves ranges from old leaves to medium age leaves... leaves were not exposed to insecticides, unless fogging takes place which is rare in my area.

i keep my pupas in my air con room, due to the cooler temps in here, the pupa will take a slighltly longer time to hatch coz cooler temps reduce metabolic rate(am i right?). i kept them in a box and most pupated on the surface of the box. the box is clean regularly, water to sustain the curry stalks are changed. i use tissue as a medium to soak the water and wrap ard the stem to prevent cats from drowning. box is 50cm x 50cm x 40cm roughly...

all the metamorhic cycles should have been completed by now, coz the first butterfly as the first candidate has hatched, a female. second was male, 3 was another male(i think). The 3rd butt to hatch is the last cat to pupate in that batch of CM babies.

however, i noticed a darkening colour of a particular pupa for days. Usually for CM, the wings area of the pupa will darken and eventually black and the head can be seen. but in my case, the wing area darken, the head area darken. After that, the process just stopped and the pupa remained as it is for 3 days already. BTW, i took in the caterpillars from 1st instar the moment they hatch.

i have another pupa, same case, only the colour was lighter, but u can see the darkening sequence is much lighter of the previous one... no parasite hatch so far...and the pupa progress is stagnant for now, no further darkening.

any idea what's goin on? bacterial infection?? i heard caterpillars can be prone to bacterial infection. but in this case it's pupas.

[Commander]

i keep my pupas in my air con room, due to the cooler temps in here, the pupa will take a slighltly longer time to hatch coz cooler temps reduce metabolic rate(am i right?). i kept them in a box and most pupated on the surface of the box. the box is clean regularly, water to sustain the curry stalks are changed. i use tissue as a medium to soak the water and wrap ard the stem to prevent cats from drowning. box is 50cm x 50cm x 40cm roughly...

all the metamorhic cycles should have been completed by now, coz the first butterfly as the first candidate has hatched, a female. second was male, 3 was another male(i think). The 3rd butt to hatch is the last cat to pupate in that batch of CM babies.

however, i noticed a darkening colour of a particular pupa for days. Usually for CM, the wings area of the pupa will darken and eventually black and the head can be seen. but in my case, the wing area darken, the head area darken. After that, the process just stopped and the pupa remained as it is for 3 days already. BTW, i took in the caterpillars from 1st instar the moment they hatch.

i have another pupa, same case, only the colour was lighter, but u can see the darkening sequence is much lighter of the previous one... no parasite hatch so far...and the pupa progress is stagnant for now, no further darkening.

any idea what's goin on? bacterial infection?? i heard caterpillars can be prone to bacterial infection. but in this case it's pupas.
Yes, there are some instances where the cat or pupa is infected with either bacteria or viruses. They just shrivel and die (if at cat stage), or if it has already pupate, the pupa turns oily, black and just stops there. In such a case of death, it's not due to parasitism by wasps or flies, but due to a "disease".

Not really explanable in detail, unless you know a cat pathologist who can analyse what caused its death. If, as you say, the others in the same batch pupated and hatched successfully, then the last few may have been infected.

I recall that when we were helping the Zoo at Fragile Forest some years ago, a whole batch of Great Mormons just died like that. An observation is that you need to really clean the breeding cage/box or where you keep them. One sign is that the cat droppings are covered with mould or fungus. These can create a situation for bacteria or other micro-organisms to breed and later attack the cats.

On an internet website on cat breeding (and also on one of the entomologist e-shops), they sell a disinfectant to wash the container after breeding sessions (from the name of the chemical, it sounds something like Clorox, or our common bleach). Then after disinfecting, you'll have to rinse the container properly and leave it to "rest" for two weeks before starting the next batch. But these measures are more for the commercial breeders who cannot afford to lose an entire batch of cats at one go.