Behavior
Caterpillars have been called "eating machines", and eat leaves voraciously. Most species shed their skin four or five times as their bodies grow, and they eventually pupate into an adult form. Caterpillars grow very quickly; for instance, a tobacco hornworm will increase its weight ten-thousandfold in less than twenty days. An adaptation that enables them to eat so much is a mechanism in a specialized midgut that quickly transports ions to the lumen (midgut cavity), to keep the potassium level higher in the midgut cavity than in the blood.
Most caterpillars are solely herbivorous. Many are restricted to one species of plant, while others are polyphagous. A few, including the clothes moth, feed on detritus. Most predatory caterpillars feed on eggs of other insects, aphids, scale insects, or ant larvae. Some are cannibals, and others prey on caterpillars of other species (e.g. Hawai'ian Eupithecia). A few are parasitic on cicadas or leaf hoppers. Some Hawai'ian caterpillars (Hyposmocoma molluscivora) use silk traps to capture snails.
Many caterpillars are nocturnal. For example, the "cutworms" (of the Noctuidae family) hide at the base of plants during the day and only feed at night. Others, such as gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar) larvae, change their activity patterns depending on density and larval stage, with more diurnal feeding in early instars and high densities.
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