Dear H. Alejandro

I do not work on this insect, you may try Tween 20 at low concentration   

Most butterflies put some eggs individually at the start or end,

you may obtain the egg before the onset from butterfly Female genitalia or try to disrupt the egg lying process.

Hoping this will be helpful

Regards

Prof. Houda Kawas

Pls. find the attached files and the references, 

Hoping this will be helpful to your project

good luck

I used to use a low concentration of household bleach to separate cecidomyiid ovaries. Probably have to optimize the time and concentration. You can kill the process by simply flooding with water.

Dear Jeremy Heath

 That's true, but may can try short periods and different concentrations

I reared the codling moth ( tortricdae) and also the wax moth Galleria mellonella and many other insect pests but not this spp. Try using low concentration of 0.9% NaCl for  a short time or what is called normal saline (prepared).

Thank you all for your answers. Part of the problem is that LBAM produces an egg mass that isn't easy top detach from the substrate or pull out individual eggs. I've worked with other Lepidoptera that lay eggs pretty much individually and detaching them was usually easy. As mentioned on the question, I've tried bleach and NaOH (not extensively), but none of them produced any sign of separation. As far as I can tell, we don't understand the nature of this "glue" very well, preliminary studies suggest it's made out of proteins, but in other Lepidoptera there are also carbohydrates. Seems to be a very interesting matrix. I'll try some of your suggestions and other enzymes that break proteins. Thanks.

You are welcome

If alkaline solutions are not affected, moderate and acidic solutions can be applied to affect the presumed protein or protein analyzer enzymes can be tested.

Regards

Houda

Hi H. Alejandro Merchan

You can find many useful references on attachment 1

https://academic.oup.com/jee/article/80/3/712/2214730

2

https://www.ars.usda.gov/arsuserfiles/11809/WITHIN-TREE%20SPATIAL%20PATTERNS.pdf

3

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03235408.2017.1327402?scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=gapp20

3

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1023/A:1009922101934.pdf

4

https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0931876885

5

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/canadian-entomologist/article/method-for-separating-and-surface-sterilizing-the-eggs-of-the-spruce-budworm-choristoneura-fumiferana-lepidoptera-tortricidae1/5651C5BC510B2AD2A7C7F14B96567E91

6

https://books.google.com/books?id=o0xFG-MDpWYC

7

https://books.google.com/books?isbn=9004092277

8

https://www.forestpests.org/vd/97.html

9

https://www.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/pubwarehouse/pdfs/23633.pdf

10

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5531/451ebbba59c7031df41fbe923b032fc43ca1.pdf

11

https://repositorio.pucrs.br/dspace/handle/10923/5332

12

https://ci.nii.ac.jp/lognavi?name=nels&lang=en&type=pdf&id=ART0001267304

13

https://caps.ceris.purdue.edu/dmm/91

s

https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/1811/5060/1/V65N02_060.pdf

q

https://journal.entsocbc.ca/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/466/476

i

https://www.fealq.org.br/ojs/index.php/revistadeagricultura/article/viewFile/323/pdf_5

a

https://www.imperovo.com.ua/en/step-by-step

c

https://mro.massey.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10179/1777/02_whole.pdf?sequence=1

f

https://file.scirp.org/Html/1-1270086_55295.htm

h

https://entomology.tfrec.wsu.edu/jfbhome/growerarticles/nobbsthesis/nobbsthesis.pdf