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A large tobacco hornworm (Manduca sexta) munching on your tomato plant might look a little menacing. But look closer, and the hornworm reveals something far more interesting: it's an integral part of a living food web, in which even the plants we grow for food provide habitat and resources for a wide range of species. The tobacco hornworm has two particularly important ecological paths. If it escapes parasitism and completes its development, it becomes a Carolina sphinx moth—