Captive raised caterpillar observations

General
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I wish I could like this comment more than once.

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As I said before, all my caterpillars I raise are wild caught, but I also always catch species that are thriving at that time of the year, and they always develop pretty fast so when I release them, I still see the same populations thriving without any change, and also I always raise a decent amount of individuals, so i make sure the phenology of their populations is not affected. In fact, most of the caterpillars I raise are collected already when caterpillars, mostly when their development is almost complete. And the adults I get are pretty healthy also.

And insects here arenā€™t very seasonal here either.

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Exactly.

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The problem there is that Bugguide applies only to the US and Canada.

That has not been my experience. One of my data points with captive-reared caterpillars is survivorship to adulthood.

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I disagree with this. Most of the recent insects (Lepidoptera) I have reared are late instar, brought inside, kept in outside conditions for the winter, then released when they should be.

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Well yeah, I think youā€™re right, my caterpillars should be named ā€˜ā€˜captive raisedā€™ā€™, because I have absolutely no control on their reproductive process.

Noooo,

Yes, I understand that very well, I totally agree with that point, but I think I need to say this once more:

I always collect extremely few individuals, even if I see the same female laying eggs I wonā€™t collect them all, just one or two (butterflies here lay very few eggs for some reason) and maybe three or four if Iā€™m very lucky. Even collecting five would already be an exaggeration. And most of the time (95%) I collect them when they are caterpillars already, mostly in pretty advanced instars, so many times most of their development happens in the wild. I also understand their role in the food chain and how important they are for animals that prey on them, but what about unpalatable species? And when collecting them when they are already caterpillars gives a chance for parasitoids that otherwise couldnā€™t have spread their genes.

Ok, now thatā€™s definitely terrible for the environment and I understand the reasons: not only it could affect their migratory instinct, but when removing so many tadpoles thereā€™s nobody else controlling algal blooms and cleaning the body of water where they lived, and they also used to feed animals that thanks to the tadpole absence struggle more to find food. And if all the adult frogs are released exactly where they were they could provoke something even worse, like an uncontrollable frog population that would completely destroy the ecosystem, or an outbreak of some sort of deadly pathogen.

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Me too.

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Yes, Bugguideā€™s observations are restricted to the US and Canada.

Well, yes, definitely I donā€™t guarantee their survival but what I meant is that if it survives to adulthood it was thanks to my intervention and very likely it would have died in the wild without my help.

Hopefully I was clear enough.

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Amount of daylight may also affect them in temperate zones. May not be a factor for equatorial species. There may be other factors that Iā€™m not aware of, as Iā€™m not an expert on butterfly life cycles. I wouldnā€™t be surprised if there are factors that the experts are unaware of.

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