Shelter building behavior of Pyrrhopyge papius (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae) and the use of the Mayfield method for estimating survivorship of shelter-building lepidopteran larvae

Abstract

Estimating the survivorship of lepidopteran larvae in the field poses many problems, most notably the potential for monitored subjects to simply wander away. Larvae of the family Hesperiidae, however, construct and dwell in shelters built out of leaf tissue on their host plants, return to their shelters between feeding bouts, and build a predictable series of shelters during larval ontogeny. Here we describe the shelter building behavior of Pyrrhopyge papius Hopffer, 1874 from northeastern Ecuador. Subsequently we test the use of the Mayfield method, a widely-used ornithological method for estimating survivorship of nests, to examine its utility for monitoring survival in free-living hesperiid larvae. Pyrrhopyge papius builds three distinct shelter types during its ontogeny. Monitoring of larvae in the field was successful, generating a predicted 16.4% survivorship from hatching to pupation. We found no significant differences in survivorship between larval shelter types, and only marginally significant differences between years. The Mayfield method of data collection and analysis may be a useful tool for some studies of survivorship in free-living lepidopteran larvae. © 2010 Sociedade Brasileira de Zoologia. All rights reserved.