tomato hornworm - Mud Puddles to Meteors

what ’ s that ?
tomato hornworm
Manduca quinquemaculata
- Tomato hornworm caterpillars are the larva of the five-spotted hawkmoth; a gray and brown
moth from the Sphingidae family that closely resembles the white-lined sphinx moth.
- Their range is from Northwestern Mexico, throughout the United States, and up into southern
Canada.
- They are typically bright green, but can occasionally be darker (as in the specimen shown here),
and have a black posterior horn.
- At approximately four inches long they are one of the largest caterpillars in North America.
- They have three sets of true legs, which will become their legs when they undergo metamorphosis to become a moth, and five sets of prolegs.
-The holes on side of the caterpillar are actually spiracles. These are tubes that allow the caterpillar to take in oxygen and release carbon dioxide as it moves.
- They are often found on tomato plants, as their name would indicate, but they feed on a variety
of plants in the nightshade family (Solanaceae) including: pepper, tobacco, potato and eggplant.
- The moth lays eggs on the leaves of a host plant and approximately five days later the caterpillars
hatch and begin eating.
- After molting five times in order to grow bigger, they will go down into the soil to pupate. They
overwinter in the soil, wiggling their way back to the surface to emerge as moths in the spring.
- They are parasitized by a wasp that lays eggs inside the caterpillar. These wasps emerge in white
pupal cases (that can be seen on the back of the caterpillar), after feeding on the insides of the
caterpillar.
- Tomato hornworms can turn black because of cool temperatures at the time of hatching, and
also that it is a disease called “black death.”
Copyright Anne Riechmann and Dawn Smith, Mud Puddles to Meteors, 2013
Use these photos for nature journals, lap books, or insect reports.
Copyright Anne Riechmann and Dawn Smith, Mud Puddles to Meteors, 2013
word cloud
These words can be cut out and used for creating poetry, lap book projects,
nature journaling, or anything else you can imagine.
hornworm
tomato
caterpillar
hawkmoth
garden
pupate
wasp
insect
sphingidae
Copyright Anne Riechmann and Dawn Smith, Mud Puddles to Meteors, 2013
spiracles
my creature fact sheet
tomato hornworm
what i know
what i ’ d like to find out
use this space for a photo or sketch of a tomato hornworm
Copyright Anne Riechmann and Dawn Smith, Mud Puddles to Meteors, 2013
Tomato Hornworms: A Word Search
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hornworm
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