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Butterfly Garden

Tomato Hornworm Egg Cycle Photos

12 years ago

I have take a few photos to show the progress of the hornworm egg. I thought they turned out kinda cool and thought I would share.

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Comments (14)

MissSherry
12 years ago
Those pictures are absolutely fantastic!
Isn't it funny how the hatchlings already have the LONG horn?
That picture of the hatchling coming out of the egg is as good as I've seen - do you have a macro lens on your camera? What kind of camera do you have?
Sherry
mschaetz
Original Author
12 years ago
Thanks so much, I really love taking pictures. I have a Nikon D90 and use a 105mm Macro with a 2X teleconverter lens. My favorite is the one of the cat eating its egg shell. And then the last one that reminds me of a wiener dog... :D
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I usually transfer the caterpillars to my Datura which they will eat as well. These guys can make short shrift of a tomato plant. Have any of you watched a late instar cat consume a leaf? In record time, I tell you! You can even hear them munching away. I love em and want to keep em because they are such good pollinators. Susan
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Even after cracking all those tomato plant hornworm eggs, I'm still finding more caterpillars on my plants, including a few that have been badly parasitized by whatever it is that makes those white things on their backs. They've gotten to some of my actual tomatoes, eating big chunks out of them. I've been cutting off the stems they're on, putting them in water picks and sticking them in the soil of the big container that had a tomato growing in it - it was going to be the plant I gave the hornworms, but it's just a skeleton of one now. Wagner says that tobacco hornworms have 7 diagonal lines and tomato hornworms have 8 with an extra horizontal line along the bottom making the diagonal lines look like sideways 'Vs' - mine all have 7 diagonal lines, no white line across the bottom, plus all their horns have turned red, so they must all be tobacco hornworms/manducca sexta. I'm just going to let them find their own place to tunnel underground - there's plenty of it out there! I've been feeding them the stems on my tomato plants that are in shady spots that will never flower and make tomatoes, like the lowermost leaves and others. Several times people have asked how I got interested in butterflies and moths. After finding so many stripped tomato plant branches and tomatoes that had been bitten into, I remembered that it was actually tomato/tobacco hornworms that prompted me to really get into wildlife. It was all the beautiful butterflies I saw on this property when we first looked at it that really made me want to buy it. Then after we moved here, I enjoyed the butterflies, but didn't study them, much less raise any myself. I planted a garden each spring like I did when I lived in town - in town, I'd get an occasional hornworm, but they didn't do enough damage to worry about. After we moved here I'd hardly get any tomatoes at all because of the JILLIONS of huge hornworms that totally devoured my plants. The weeds grew more rampantly than they ever did in town, too. I finally decided that the only way I'd ever be able to grow tomatoes or other vegetables here was to use vast amounts of insecticides, which is something I didn't want to do - this has got to be one of the "buggiest" places in America! Since I couldn't lick 'em, I joined 'em! The grocery store has plenty of vegetables, I thought, so that's where I'd get them. I made this picture of two of the tobacco hornworms - notice that one has dark lines and the other doesn't - MissSherry
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What you want are short wavelength ultraviolet lights. The LED ones don't get any shorter than medium wave. I don't have much experience using UV on hornworms, but this message thread intrigued me. I found a hornworm and tried my LED UV light on it with no effect. After reading fotogreg's post I did some research. I use to have one of the mineral-grade UV lights when I was a kid. It was bell shaped with a flat filter that could be removed. It was AC only and cost 15 dollars. (Candy bars were a dime at the time.) You could remove the filter and smell the ozone being generated by the mercury vapor bulb. It came with a clear piece of plastic that you could use to filter out the short waves and see a dramatic drop in the number of things that would glow. The take away from my first UV lamp is that shortwave filters are flat and cannot be bent. The filter is used to remove visible light. The filter is the most expensive part of the UV light. The mercury vapor bulbs are mass produced to use in sterilizers. They are mostly quartz, but there is one made by Philips that uses borosilicate glass (Pyrex). The mercury vapor bulbs produce ultraviolet light with a wavelength of 253.7 nanometers. This is bad for your eyes and will cause sunburn. There are many mineral-grade UV lights for sale on eBay. They are usually low wattage with a small filter window. Another use for UV lamps is in a fixed mineral display. These will be higher power and designed to run for longer periods. There is one home-built lamp on sale that is 100 watts and described as a "UV death ray!" It uses the best UV filter available, the Hoya U325c. I am considering buying a $45 UV lamp from this seller: UV Lights Biz 2012 Note that these lamps become less efficient over time. (> 10,000 hours or so). The quartz in the bulb absorbs mercury and starts blocking the UV. The filter starts blocking UV, too, though a process called solarization.
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Apparently we have two totally different issues discussed here - actually 3. The first set of two photos with the white spots was what I was addressing above. At hat time I was posting the others pics of the branches and leaves had not been posted. So nothing that shows in your first 2 photos has anything to do with CTV so no, there is no need to pull the plants based on those pics. and no CTV cannot be "cured" either with neem or anything else. Plants, once infected with it, do not recover. Now the second issue and photos of the branches and leaves (again a totally different issue) might be CTV as the small mis-shaped leaves and the bronzing color is apparent. Can't tell if the undersides are the dark purple of CTV or not. But the important question is have you actually seen any leaf hoppers? But it could also be nutrient deficiency and, since leaf hoppers are not nearly the problem in CA as they are in the Eastern half of the US and the deep south, if I had to put money on it that is what I would bet on rather than CTV. 48 hours will tell as if CTV the plants will be dead or clearly dying. Pulling them is up to you. If you still have plants not showing symptoms then yes, I'd probably pull the really bad ones and hope to save the others by feeding them well - have no info available on your fertilization regimen. However please understand that IF it is CTV then they too are probably already infected. The only control for CTV is preventing leaf hoppers access to the plants in the first place and that means growing under cover or using strong pesticides that are effective against them. Unfortunately by the time Neem kills them they have already infected the plant. The last pic - the tomato with the holes - I can think of at least 10 different things that could cause such holes but none of them are leaf hoppers or related to CTV. Birds, tomato worms, baby hornworms, any of the leaffooted bug family, hail, many different beetles, any bug with a proboscis, a falling stick from a tree, etc. I wouldn't worry about them. Hope this is of some help. Dave
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jrcagle
12 years ago
Unbelievable photos! Thanks for posting.

Jeff
catherinet
12 years ago
Wow! Incredible pics! Hornworms are so cool. Never saw pics like this before. Thanks! LOL.......you're right about the wiener dog!
soonergrandmom
12 years ago
Lisa, Your photography is amazing, but the subject.....well maybe there should be one last picture.
bananasinohio
12 years ago
Awesome! I felt like I was on the leaf with it hatching! Thanks for sharing.
-Elisabeth
Cindy_C
12 years ago
What a great series of pictures!
Lisa_H OK
12 years ago
I sent soonergrandmom over here from the Oklahoma forum....she's not quite as excited about hornworm photos as the butterfly enthusiasts! LOL

Carol, I didn't take them. I only wish my photography was that good!!!

Great pics! I absolutely find them fascinating.

Lisa
mschaetz
Original Author
12 years ago
I don't mind hornworm haters. My mother, who knows I am excited about them, just smooshed one last week on her plant before she realized she should have saved it for me. ;D

Thanks so much for all of the compliments too on the photos. Photography is another fairly new hobby for me, and I am loving it.

Melissa
susanlynne48
12 years ago
I always suggest that the "hornworm haters" grow a few extra plants - especially those that are shy in producing tomatoes, just for the hornworms. They can then remove the leaf on their valued tomatoe plants and put it on the plants grown especially for hornworms. But only if they value them as pollinators in their gardens.

Susan
biradarcm
12 years ago
Lisa, These pictures are magnificent and absolutely fantastic macros! I am planning buy Canon 760D, but your Nikon90D looks ideal. What is your recommendation for Macro (flowers and vegetables) and Telephotos (birds)...

I am thinking about following DSLR System;

Canon 60D + 18-135mm Kit Lens : 1300 $
Canon 10-300mm IS USM Lens : 500 $
Canon 50mm Lens : 130 $
Total : 1930 $

Cheers -Chandra
mschaetz
Original Author
12 years ago
If I had it to do over again I would go with a Canon. Overall the lenses run less expensive and with adapters other brand name lenses can be used with the Canon camera. Say you found a cheap Nikon macro lens (or already own one) you can purchase this mounting adapter (about $20) and use it on your Canon. This can not be done with the Nikon, no adapters are made for them. :(
bandjzmom
12 years ago
Wow. Those really are incredible shots. Thanks so much for sharing them with us.~~Angie
Staci Davis
10 months ago
I can’t see the photos and I need too bc I’m not sure if what I have are hornworm eggs or not.

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?what to do with this little guy?

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