Parasitized Caterpillar

[Nancy Bell]

I believe this is a type of Sphinx Moth (please correct me if this is wrong) with the cocoons of a parasitic wasp on its body. Small parasitic wasps lay their eggs in the caterpillar and as the wasps develop they feed inside the caterpillar but do not kill it. They then exit the caterpillar, build these silken cocoons and metamorphose into adults. This is the first time I have seen this. Photographed in upper Michigan in mid- August.
Even though I used f25 to maximize DOF, it was difficult for me to find a good angle that would result in maximum sharpness. This caterpillar is roly-poly round and every cocoon is at a different angle!

Canon 5D Mark III, Canon 100mm f2.8 macro, tripod, 1 sec, f25, ISO 640, flash -2 compensation, manual focus using live view.

C & C most welcome.

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Nancy. Yup, this looks like a type of sphinx moth - a number of sphinx species have these 7 diagonal bands on their sides so I'm not sure which one this is. It's very cool to find one parasitized like this - I have yet to see one of these! My daughter, who is the "bug person" in the family, tells me that while the wasp larvae don't kill the caterpillar initially, they may do enough damage to its internal organs in their latter stages of development before pupating that the caterpillar ultimately doesn't survive. Of course, this could vary from species to species and may also depend on the number of parasitic larvae feeding on the caterpillar. It looks to me like you were successful in getting sufficient sharpness and DOF on the caterpillar - it must have been a very calm day to achieve this sharpness with a 1 sec ss. The lighting looks good on the caterpillar and cocoons and the water drops add interest. You might consider blending the the darkest areas of the background a little - especially on the right side of the frame - as they are drawing my eye. (Or you could remove some of the dark areas by cropping a little off the right.) Overall, this is very nicely done!

[Mitch Haimov]

Cool find, Nancy! Looks like your moth has a lot of passengers. Are those more eggs at the end of the lowest stripe? You did well at getting everything important sharp. Actually I'm wondering if this one might be a tad over sharpened. I'm not seeing halos, but in-focus areas seem a bit "crunchy," which I would not expect at this magnification.

[Nancy Bell]

Steve, after I posted that black blob in the bkgd also caught my eye. I will look also at more cropping. Mitch, I agree with you that maybe this is a bit over-sharpened. I vacillated on my settings and just could not decide. Thank you both for your helpful observations.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Excellent Nancy if you were concerned about DOF a simple solution would be to reduce the magnification a little bit.
As an alternative to Steve's suggestion you could pick up a darker brush and go roughly around the perimeter in an irregular fashion this would make a false vignette and concentrate attention inside.

[Jason Stander]

Hi Nancy... Sublime shot... Excellent detail (agree on the sharpening)... Bg is for me ok... I like natural bg's... I would have maybe cropped it more on the right... And tone down the highlight on the right prominent leave... Otherwise super work... WD!

[Nancy Bell]

Thank you everyone. I'll go back and tweak the image with all your good suggestions.

[OvidiuCavasdan]

Impressive looking caterpillar and very interesting scene captured well. I like this a lot, suggestions above will make it even better. Well done!