Begin with a sketch of the stage you have adopted. Use colored pencils to appropriately color your bug. You may want to retain a copy of this keepsake for your family album. You will probably not be able to sketch every stage but should have several sketches during the course of your bug's development. These sketches are intended to develop your powers of observation and make you really look at your bug closely.
Insects are ectothermic and their growth and development are very dependent on temperature.
To examine the effects of temperature on milkweed bugs growth rates, we have reared two additional cohorts of milkweed bugs at 19.5 degrees C and 25.5 degrees C in our constant temperature cabinets. We will report these results to you when we analyze the data. Record the date of death and the stage of development at the bottom of your datasheet. Begin a new datasheet for each bug adopted. The Life Stage Changes sketches and the datasheets will become a permanent part of a lab report that will include the follow-up lab, Life Table Lab.