Reproduction
The larval food plant is oak. The insect overwinters as a larva. The body of the caterpillar larva is red-brown, but it camouflages itself by attaching a screen of oak leaf fragments to its specially hooked bristles.After overwintering, the attached camouflage changes and consists of bud scales from the oak tree. Hugh Cott compared the larva's use of "concealment afforded by masks of adventitious material" to military camouflage, pointing out that the "device is, of course, essentially the same as one widely practised during the Great War for the concealment, not of caterpillars, but of caterpillar-tractors, [gun] battery positions, observation posts and so forth." The larva spins silk over one side of each piece to be attached, and then hooks the silk onto its bristles to keep the camouflage in place.
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