Certain caterpillars have cultural relationships with Indigenous Australians that highlight complex links between ecology and human ecology. These caterpillars are imbued with meanings, values and uses for Aboriginal people that are very different from how western science views these species. Collaboration between Aboriginal knowledge holders and western scientists can provide land management information and the motivation needed to improve habitats that support valuable species.
Alice Springs, known as Mparntwe to Aboriginal and local people, has many sacred sites. Arrernte people believe these sites to be associated with ancestral beings who metamorphose as animals and plants, which can also be totems for individual people. Ancestral beings, including 4 different types of caterpillars and 1 beetle, created parts of the MacDonnell Ranges, and certain gaps, rock piles, trees and woodlands in the Alice Springs region. The caterpillar ancestors travelled from various directions through the region.
For Arrernte people, the imposing ridgeline of the eastern MacDonnell Ranges is also the ayepe-arenye caterpillar, and the ntyalke formed parts of the western MacDonnell Ranges. One dramatic gap (ntaripe/Heavitree), through which rivers periodically flow and people travel, is believed by Arrernte people to be formed where the ilperenye beetle savaged the ayepe-arenye and chewed off their heads.
These caterpillar characters correspond to 4 scientific taxa of hawk moth: ayepe-arenye is the white-lined hawk moth (Hyles livornicoides); ntyalke is the vine hawk moth (Hippotion celerio); utnerrengatye is the moth Coenotes eremophilae; and the fourth irkngeltye is possibly the convolvulus hawk moth (Agrius convolvuli).
Arrernte names and knowledge associate each caterpillar with a particular plant taxon: tarvine (Boerhavia diffusa and B. schomburgkiana), emu bush (Eremophila longifolia) and pink rockwort (Sedopsis filsonii). The plants provide forage and habitat for each caterpillar. The Arrente significance and complex linkages are exemplified in the word ayepe, which is synonymous with the plant B. diffusa, the umbilical cord of a newborn baby, and a practice that cares for the baby’s wellbeing. The ayepe (tarvine) plant is habitat to ayepe-arenye, the caterpillar.
The caterpillars were also once an exceptional food source:
In olden times, people used to get all the yeperenyes and prepare them [to eat] in a ceremonial way … they have a certain way of cooking it up, gathering them and putting them in a coolamon [and] share it out with their families … they were tasty and fatty, more like prawns. (Rosie Furber, Northern Territory Government, n.d.)
Nowadays, they are not eaten, perhaps partly because of their sacredness and increasing scarcity.
Arrernte expert Veronica Perrurle Dobson says:
There were once a lot of ayepe (tarvine) growing here. The tar vines relates to the ayepe-arenye caterpillar. Ayepe-arenye caterpillar lives on the ayepe plant and eats it bare then lays its eggs and goes underground to cocoon. It’s a cycle that these plants and grubs go through. (VP Dobson, pers. comm., 3 Dec 2015)
Custodians worry about declines in these iconic species. For example, irkngeltye is rarely seen, and ayepe-arenye, once common, persists in pockets. These declines can be slowed with the reintroduction of Arrernte landcare practices, weed removal and sacred site protection. Arrernte beliefs and knowledge provide insight into the ecological processes that can be observed, and link culture to land management for future generations of Aboriginal people and other Australians.
