Consul fabius cecrops (Doubleday, 1849)
Larval morphology and behavior:
Early instar larvae rest on a frass chain at the end of the host plant leaf tip.
At a later instar the larvae roll a shelter from the side of a leaf and give it a heavy lining of silk.
If disturbed, larvae will bite and extrude a chemical substance through a neck gland.
Distribution:
Collected from several locations in Heredia Province, Costa Rica.
Foodplant Associations:
Piperaceae: Piper glabratum, Piper hispidum, Piper friedrichsthalli, Piper auritum, Piper colonense, Piper phytolaccaefolium, Piper virgulatorum, Piper garagaranum, Piper glabrescens, Piper reticulatum, Piper multiplinervium, Piper generalense, Piper sp.
.
Predator Associations:
Pseudomyrmex mexicana (Formicidae, Hymenoptera).
Parasitoid Associations:
Tachinidae: Unknown spp. (N=4).
This information is based an ongoing project dedicated to the inventory and dissemination of information on lepidopteran larvae, their host plants, and their parasitoids in a Costa Rican tropical wet forest and an Ecuadorian montane cloud forest.
N=92 rearings as of 2012, 40 eclosed, 48 died and 4 were parasitized.
Mean duration 3rd instar to pupae: 17.5 days; mean duration as pupae: 7-11 days; (N =11).