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Updated: May 6, 2025
This last Anthidium is the victim also of the Unarmed Zonitis. Thus we have two closely-related exploiters for the same victim. Bramble-bees and Others: chaps. i., iii. and x. Bramble-bees and Others: passim. During the last fortnight of July, I witness the emergence of the Burnt Zonitis from the pseudochrysalis. The latter is cylindrical, slightly curved and rounded at both ends.
The only Melodiæ in my part of the country which, though their habits are still unknown, might correspond in size with either the larva or the pseudochrysalis in question are the Twelve-pointed Mylabris and Schaeffer's Cerocoma. I find the first in July on the flowers of the sea scabious; I find the second at the end of May and in June on the heads of the Îles d'Hyères everlasting.
I shall suggest, to denote this curious organism, the term pseudochrysalis; and I shall reserve the names primary larva, secondary larva and tertiary larva to denote, in a couple of words, each of the three forms under which the Sitares possess all the characteristics of larvæ.
If we soften it in water, we easily recognize that it possesses an organization almost identical with that which preceded the pseudochrysalis. In the latter case only, the mandibles and the legs are not so robust. Thus, after passing through the pseudochrysalid stage, the Oil-beetles for some time resume the preceding form, almost without modification. The nymph comes next.
This is the appearance displayed by the pseudochrysalis during the winter and spring. But in June it has lost this withered appearance; it represents a perfect balloon, an ellipsoid of which the sections perpendicular to the major axis are circles.
The tertiary larva differs from the secondary only by its abdomen, which is less fat, owing to the absolute emptiness of the digestive apparatus; by a double chain of fleshy cushions extending along each side; by the rim of the stigmata, crystalline and slightly projecting, but less so than in the pseudochrysalis; by the ninth pair of breathing-holes, hitherto rudimentary but now almost as large as the rest; lastly by the mandibles ending in a very sharp point.
Pale stigmata, eight pairs of them, placed as in the pseudochrysalis, that is, the first and largest pair on the line dividing the first two segments of the thorax and the seven others on the first seven abdominal segments. The secondary larva and the pseudochrysalis also have a very small stigma on the penultimate segment of the abdomen.
This shedding of the skin, which leaves the body of the pseudochrysalis uncovered, recalls the mode of transformation observed in the Oil-beetles and is different from that of the Sitares and the Zonites, whose pseudochrysalis remains wholly enveloped in the skin of the secondary larva, a sort of bag which is sometimes loose, sometimes tight and always unbroken.
Then the skin splits across the head and down the thorax. The tattered slough is thrust back; and the pseudochrysalis appears in sight, absolutely naked. It is white at first, as the larva was; but by degrees and fairly rapidly it turns to the russet hue of virgin wax, with a brighter red at the tips of the various tubercles which indicate the future legs and mouth-parts.
Let us pass in silence over this long period of repose, during which the Sitaris, in the form of a pseudochrysalis, slumbers at the bottom of its cell, in a sleep as lethargic as that of a germ in its egg, and come to the months of June and July in the following year, the period of what we might call a second hatching.
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