[2] After the larva's fourth instar, it will descend from the larval mass, excavate a small chamber in the soil and pupate.

The adults will mate the same night they emerge, and afterwards the females will lay their eggs in large batches on the underside tree leaves.

To the indigenous people of the Zongolica area of Veracruz, the larvae are also a form of sustenance; they are gathered and eaten after being cooked.

[3] It belongs to the subfamily Arsenurinae, consisting of approximately 57 species of Neotropical saturniids found from tropical Mexico to northern Argentina.

They possess a dark brown head, a soma covered with fine short setae, and black tentacle-like protuberances on the dorsum of the thoracic segments.

[4] The giant silk moth occurs mainly in Central and Southern America, from tropical Mexico to southeastern Brazil.

For instance, the larvae of many swallowtails begin as cryptic mimics of bird droppings but then switch to aposematism or aggressive mimicry in later instars.

[7] Predation and/or parasitism is hypothesized to have played a role in the grouping behavior and aposematism of the giant silk moth.

[5] The bright colors, augmented by the large number of caterpillars in a larval mass, are a visible deterrent to any would-be predators.

In the fourth instar and onwards, the pheromone trail is mainly used as a marker to convey information for relocation to the central place site.

By the fourth instar the larvae begin to rest diurnally in large conspicuous masses on the lower trunk of larger branches.

In this behavior, caterpillars rest during the day in large visible groups, then mobilize at dusk to forage nocturnally as solitary larvae in the canopy.

[8] At dawn, caterpillars will follow a pheromone trail to the original central place site to form bivouacs.

[7] Studies have shown that larval trail following can be elicited by wiping cuticular material collected from the venter and dorsum of the abdomen of giant silk moth caterpillars onto the host plant.

The trail marker is hypothesized to be a component of the cuticle that is passively deposited from the posterior-ventral region of the abdomen as larvae move over the host plant.

The following night, females look for a suitable food plant like Guazuma ulmifolia, where they will lay their entire egg load in one mass on the underside of a leaf.