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hornworms on pawpaw

 
gardener
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anyone know what species of hormworms/sphinx moths eat pawpaw leaves? i had a number of these guys on one of my trees just munching away. i left one so i can let it hatch out and see (if i can keep an eye on it, i think they pupate in the leaf litter), but the rest were a special treat for the chickens.
hornworms.jpg
hornworms!
hornworms!
 
steward
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This link has a video to help identify the two species of hornworms.

https://entomology.ces.ncsu.edu/2013/12/identifying-hornworms/

Two species of hornworm caterpillars feed on tobacco and other plants. Tobacco hornworms (Manduca sexta) and tomato hornworms (Manduca quinquemaculata) are easy to confuse. They both have similar appearance, life cycles, and eat some of the same host plants. Mature caterpillars of either of these pests can quickly defoliate tobacco and tomato plants. We made a video that describes their lifecycle and illustrates key characters to tell these two species apart.



Last year hornworm ate almost all the leaves on our honeysuckle before we found them.
 
pollinator
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We had those one year on pawpaw and now we have the parasitic wasps and rarely see them unless they have a bunch of larvae popping out their backs. Now that we have a bunch of umbellate flowers we seem to have a ton of the wasps.
 
pollinator
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I don't know too much about them, but apparently in their moth stage they're significant pawpaw pollinators.
 
greg mosser
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apparently there are some 125 species of sphinx/hawk moth in north america and as far as i know, most of them have hornworm-type caterpillars.

...i guess i should have done a search first? apparently Dolba hyloeus, the pawpaw sphinx. and they also eat blueberry!
 
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