Researchers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa detailed their discovery in a paperpublishedThursday in Science.
Caterpillars are the larval form of butterflies and moths, which are members of the insect order Lepidoptera.
Somehow, though, its way of life gets even stranger.
Several cases of the bone collector caterpillar, adorned in insect parts.© Rubinoff lab, Entomology Section, University of Hawaii, Manoa
Its a questionable life choice, but thats the fun thing about evolution.
It doesnt do what youd expect simply because we have these expectations that arent always accurate.
We assume life is going to be the same everywhere.
A bone collector caterpillar living undisrupted in a spider’s web. © Rubinoff lab, Entomology Section, University of Hawaii, Manoa
There are probably several factors behind the caterpillars shrinking population range, such as deforestation and other human-caused disruptions.
Whats really killing us is that we have these forest reserves that are mostly invasive species now.
And they essentially become biological deserts because all the trees are a conglomeration of things from around the world.
The insects are brought in from around the world.
And the birds are all from other places, he explained.
And so what you end up with is a community that native Hawaiian species cant survive in anymore.
If so, it would be another example of Hawaii being the extinction capitalof the world.
This is the last sort of holdout for this entire lineage.
And thats a little bit sad to think about.
We absolutely want to understand the genomic basis for how these caterpillars perceive the world.
Thats not an accident.
Thats got to have a really profound sort of genetic change from other caterpillars, he said.
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