Raising Butterflies

Anise Swallowtail Female

This is a picture of an anise swallowtail female that was raised from a caterpillar. If you want to look for anise swallowtail eggs or caterpillars, it's important to look right after their main flight. Along the California coast, anise swallowtails fly from early spring to fall. In the Rocky Mountains, anise swallowtails generally in Mayat elevations around 5000 feet; June at elevations around 6-7,000 feet; and July at 8-9,000 feet.

Example of Anise Swallowtail Habitat

In the Western U.S., you can usually find anise swallowtail butterflies in mountain canyons. Anise swallowtails use many species of parsleys that grow in canyons or on hillsides.

Rangers Buttons Plant

Here is a picture of Rangers Buttons--a parsley that anise swallowtails use in the High Sierras of Northern California. Identifying parsleys is not too difficult.  However, what's even more helpful in quickly identifying parsleys in nature is to recognize their distinctive flower heads.

Lomatium dissectum

Here is a picture of Lomatium dissectum, another species of parsley that anise swallowtails use in Utah and the Rocky Mountains. The parsley is somewhat difficult to make out in this photograph because it blends a bit with the background. Note the distinctive yellow flowerhead somewhat camouflaged towards the top of the photo.

Swallowtail eggs

When you find parsleys growing in mountainous areas where anise swallowtails fly, look on the underside of the leaves or right near the flowers for anise swallowtail eggs. The eggs you see here are actually short tailed black swallowtail eggs; but anise swallowtail eggs are very similar. (Photo courtesy Nicky Davis.)

Parsley in water bottle

Place cuttings of parsely in a bottled water with a narrow neck.  Carefully place your caterpillar on the parsley.  As you do this, make sure you cork off any spacing between the plant sprigs and the neck of the water bottle with facial tissue wads so that the larva can't crawl down the plant and drown.  Make sure that there is plenty of parsley to feed your caterpillar for roughly five days.

Open Bucket Method of Raising Swallowtails

Once you have setup your water bottles with caterpillars on plant, place them in a 5 gallon bucket. Make sure the lid has plenty of ventilation either by poking holes in it or cutting out a circular section and fastening netting over the lid.

You need to replace your parsley cuttings and remove all waste every five days or so to ensure that your caterpillars are getting fresh plant in a healthy environment. (This type of procedure becomes extremely critical when raising indra swallowtails; which will be reviewed in the Techniques by Taxa section.)

Swallowtails on Potted Parsley

If replacing parsley cuttings and cleaning out water bottles every five days becomes a burden, another option is to purchase potted parsley, dill, or fennel and place in a 10 gallon glass terrarium next to a window.

However, I would recommend placing a screen cage on top of the glass terrarium in order to prevent the greenhouse effect from overheating your glass terrarium. (You don't want to cook your caterpillars.) Or, you could just leave the terrarium open if caterpillar-feeding spiders are not a concern.

Female Lays eggs in Screen Cage

If finding swallowtail eggs and caterpillars is too difficult, another option is to collect a live female and set her up in a cage to lay eggs.  This is a picture of an indra swallowtail female in a cage laying eggs on parsley (Lomatium scabrum). This is exactly how you would set up an anise swallowtail female to lay eggs as well. Place parsley in a bouquet and place a cage over it. Place the leaves of the parsley adjacent to the sun-exposed side of the cage so that when the butterfly flies toward that part of the cage, she will run into the plant and may lay eggs on it. 

How to feed a live butterfly

One thing to remember if you decide to collect any live females for eggs. They need to be fed every day or they can die prematurely to dehydration. The technique to do this requires that you place her proboscis in soaked paper towel with honey water in a ratio of 10 parts water to 1 part honey.

Anise Swallowtail third instar caterpillar

Here is a photo of a third instar anise swallowtail caterpillar.  Always remember to handle larvae with care when transferring them from old plant to fresh plant.  You may just want to cut around the caterpillar and place it on fresh plant.

Moving caterpillars to fresh plant

One thing to always remember is that if you do decide to move caterpillars from old to new plant, they should never be moved if they are what we call "set to molt" or "set to shed" to the next instar (getting ready to shed their skin).  This video teaches you what you need to know.   http://utahbutterflies.ning.com/video/when-is-a-caterpillar-set-to

Anise Swallowtail Fifth instar caterpillar

When looking for anise swallowtail caterpillars on parsleys, the last stage, or fifth instar, can be the quite conspicuous on the plant.

Anise Swallowtail Fifth instar caterpillar

Here's another picture of a fifth instar anise swallowtail caterpillar.

Yuck!!

How do we know when our anise swallowtail caterpillar is ready to form a chrysalis?

Well, it's kinda disgusting, but the best way to verify that your fifth instar caterpillar has finished feeding is that it purges its undigested food. This characteristic is typical amongst all non-Parnassius swallowtails.

The Gizmo

Where should our caterpillar form a chrysalis?  The answer is anywhere!! In nature, wandering fifth instar caterpillars may travel for long distances to find a suitable place to pupate. In the lab, all you need is to place the larva in a gizmo--for lack of a better term.

Simply take an empty toilet tissue core and cut it horizontally in half. Take one of the pieces and fasten a 3" by 3" piece of paper towel around it with a rubber band. Place the caterpillar inside. Orient the gizmo so that the caterpillar can't escape and place on a shelf in a dark area. The caterpillar usually will wander for a couple of days before setting up a prepupa and forming a chrysalis a few days after that..

Another option is to just place the larva in a lunch sack and secure the lunch sack with paper clips.

Anise Swallowtail Chrysalis

You can see the wings developing on this anise swallowtail pupa.  Photo courtesy Nicky Davis.

Emergence Container

To emerge your adult anise swallowtail, select a plastic tub or margarine tub that is big enough to hold your butterfly. This photo shows the emergence of an indra swallowtail; but, the principle is the same. Make sure to have paper towel taped or glued around the sides so that the butterfly walk around and have room to dry its wings.