This is prime H. juno habitat, in Dona Ana county New Mexico. From this point of view looking east towards the edge of the mesa and the Rio Grande valley, there are hundreds of square miles of Mesquite dune country. Mesquite and other wild legumes are the common host plants of H. juno.
Ova of H. juno. Hemileuca typically deposit their eggs in fairly large groups. When the larvae hatch, they tend to stay together in large groups during early instars. These ova were produced by a wild female captured in late October of 2003.
Larvae of H. juno, most likely third instar. I collected this group on mesquite, on 20 April 2002.
Full grown, fifth instar caterpillar. Photo taken in late May 2002. This species is very fast to develop, preferring to eat the flowers and flower buds of their host plant. In the wild, the flower buds and flowers on mesquites only last for about 3 weeks. Some of the caterpillars did eat the leaves of the plant, but most were picky and only ate the flowers and buds. I spent several hours gathering mesquite flowers and bagging them up to keep in the refrigerator so I wouldn't run out, or if the wild supply disappeared before the larvae were ready to pupate.
Rearing Notes
Notes:
Conceived, created, edited, and published by Hunter and Joel. Kelly is the Creative Consultant. 
A pair of H. juno pupae. The larger pupa on top is a female, the smaller of the two is male.(edit Oct 2003: upon closer review of the photo, I think both of these were in fact female pupae, just one smaller than the other.) Once the larvae left the food supply and started doing laps around the bottom of their enclosure (indicating they were ready to pupate,) I moved them to a bucket with about 6 inches of dry potting soil. They didn't dig down into the soil, but made loose "covers" or chambers on the surface with silk and debris, in which to pupate. Some of the larvae stayed in this state for almost 2 weeks before actually shedding into pupae.
First adult moth to emerge! This individual eclosed on the afternoon of 15 October 2002. Compared to other saturnids, they aren't exactly striking in appearance, but they are interesting nonetheless. These moths are considered to be diurnal in the textbooks, and it's not unusual to see several of them rapidly flying through the mesquite dunes in late fall. However, during the flight season there are numbers of them attracted to building lights every night. Both males and females seem to be attracted to lights.
© June-October 2002. All content © Hunter and Joel.