Insect Taxidermy Guideline

1. Unpack your specimen from the Insect Taxidermy package

1. insect specimen, frame, pins, pinning board, forceps

2. Preparing Relaxing Chamber

1. Pour warm water carefully into an empty container.

2. Lay couple sheets of paper towel in there.

Males of most adult stag beetles usually have a pair of large to very large mandibles, and that is how you can differentiate a gender of the adult stag beetles. In case of larval stage, there is no obvious morphological character to tell whether it is a male or a female. Here I will discuss how you can tell by one small character you can find on a female larva.

If you see a light-yellow colored spots nearing their anus, it is a female! Males, like in the picture (on right), is missing the yellow spot. You see it on right side of the larva in the picture, but they have two, one in each side like picture below.

You can see these spots when they reach L3 stage, and is usually a lot easier in large species.

Setting up moth eggs are pretty simple straight forward. You just have to remember one thing: Ventilation!

Unlike scarab beetle larvae, butterfly and moth caterpillars require live plant as food source, and if enclosure is lacking well ventilation, they may suffocate from leaves degrading. Of course if you set up on a live plant in pot, this shouldn't be a problem, but if you set them up in a plastic container, do as follows:

Any containers can be used for moth caterpillar rearing. I chose this plastic food dish from Walmart, and just drilled two large holes.

Since caterpillars love to crawl around, make sure to place a mesh screen (left in picture) or very aerious fabric (right in picture) and glue them down on lid.