Metura elongatus breeding season 2019/2020 – A case of bad timing

In which two days is the difference between the potential for successful mating and having to wait another year.

A confused caterpillar?

Here’s something I haven’t seen before with case moth caterpillars, a caterpillar coming out the wrong end of the case.  I found the case on the ground in the local area. I could see part of an old moult stuck to the bottom of the case and on the ground near it so I thought…

Baby’s first case

I made a timelapse video using my iPad with a clip on zoom lens (so not fantastic quality) of the newly emerged Clania lewinii caterpillars building their cases. https://youtu.be/7a6poPJHutg This has been so fascinating to watch. It looks like they are chewing bits of leaf and sticking them together with silk to for the start…

Baby Clania lewinii caterpillars!

I've got my first ever case moth babies! I am so excited. I've read about how case moth caterpillars hatch and emerge from their mother's case, but I've never seen it. So five weeks ago I had a male Clania lewinii moth visit and mate with an adult female in my enclosure. Today, their offspring…

Dinner time in the Metura elongatus (Saunders’ Case Moth) enclosure

https://youtu.be/9-5f6UqnHsk Dinner time in my Metura elongatus (Saunders’ Case Moth) enclosure. They usually start coming out to feed around 8pm. I decided to try filming them using the iPad and a headlamp. This video shows a bunch of different instars (stages of caterpillar development), from the tiny little “witches hat” size to the 14cm long…

Clania lewinii mating

I am so excited to share what happened today. I happened to look out my window to where my case moth enclosures are and saw what I thought was a moth fluttering around inside one of them. When I went outside and looked closer I realised it wasn’t a moth on the inside trying to…

Early instar Metura elongatus

I found these on the same day I had my first Metura elongatus male moth. I’d gone for a walk to collect eucalyptus leaves for my phasmids, as well assorted foliage for my Psychidae, and discovered that the branch of eucalyptus I was about to cut had three tiny cases attached. I half expected them…

Metura elongatus building its case

https://youtu.be/nQZe7Lqd7y0 Managed to catch one of my Metura elongatus adding a stick to its case so hastily set up my iPad to video it. I used the time lapse function, but that ended up being too fast so I had to edit it to slow it down so you can see the process a bit…

Hyalarcta nigrescens male moth

The new year kicked off with the eclosion of an adult male Hyalarcta nigrescens in my enclosure. Sadly, like the males before him, he’d already battered himself around a fair bit before I found him on the bottom of the enclosure. I put his old case in front of him for him to climb up…

Clania sp. case building

I recently took this time lapse video of one of my Clania sp. adding a stick to it’s case. The caterpillar had already trimmed the stick when I noticed it and started videoing. However I’ve observed that they spend much longer checking that the stick is satisfactory before adding it to their case compared to…