On Jul 12, 11:51 am, ghb624 wrote:
Please see photo, via link below. We caught a few of these guys today,
crawling around on the tomato plant vines. Wonder if anybody can
advise what the white things are, attached to the caterpillar's back.

http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/2...rpillaron6.jpg

What you have on your "tomato horn worm" are eggs of a parasitic wasp
that is very beneficial. They live on the host worm and suck the
juices out of it. Actually, you want more of these egg cases. The
horn worm is very destructive to your tomato plants so nobody wants
them. If you leave the ones alone that have the egg attachments in a
few days they will die.
The wasps hatch and go about their business of laying eggs on more
horn worms.
The horn worm is the caterpillar of the sphinx moth or "tobacco bug"
or tobacco moth as sometimes it's called. They almost look like
humming birds the way they suck nectar from flowers and hover over a
flower.