Credits

Created by Erin Ziegler, Explore Natural Communities Intern Summer 2015, NatureServe.

Sounds from soundbible.com: Civil War Drummer, recorded by DrumM8; Eat Chips, recorded by Caroline Ford; Best Helicopter Pass, recorded by Mike Koenig. Licensed under Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0.

Bird sounds from xeno-canto.org: Carolina Chickadee, by Dan Lane, www.xeno-canto.org/154971; Black-throated Green Warbler, by Jorge de Leon Cardozo, www.xeno-canto.org/185324; Yellow-billed Cuckoo, by Elias Aristides Elias, www.xeno-canto.org/265124; Ruby-throated Hummingbird, by Russ Wigh, www.xeno-canto.org/195616. Licensed under Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0.

Music: An Upsetting Theme, Take a Chance, and Juniper, by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0.

Photo: Eastern tent caterpillar, by Matt Jones. Licensed under Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0.

References:
Eastern Tent Caterpillar 1
Eastern Tent Caterpillar 2

Transcript

Podcast time: 1:39 minutes

Look out! The caterpillars are on the march!

Eastern tent caterpillars build their white silk tents at the base of tree branches, in trees like black cherry. Go outside in spring and take a look around for the nests, each one filled with the fuzzy little caterpillars, each growing over two inches long with a white strip down their backs. We might think they're cute, but to the trees they're a real nuisance. A colony of these little guys can eat a tree bare in matter of weeks, forcing it to grow a whole new set of leaves! So what's a tree to do?

Here comes the air support!

Birds like the Carolina chickadee love to eat up the caterpillars, saving the trees from the ravenous larvae. Eastern tent caterpillars aren't just an important food source for the local birds. Migratory species like black-throated green warblers and yellow-billed cuckoos fly in to help. Even the ruby-throated hummingbird gets in on the action, ripping into the tents to gather material for their nests and leaving holes in the caterpillar's defenses for other birds to come in for a snack.

The relationship between the Eastern tent caterpillars, the trees, and the birds is just one example of how different parts of the natural communities work together to keep a healthy dynamic. Too many caterpillars year after year would kill the trees; no caterpillars and the birds will go hungry—but by working together the communities can flourish. So next time you see one of those fuzzy caterpillars or the white tents in the trees, remember how those little guys contribute to the forest.

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