Aug. 1st, 2015

urbpan: (dandelion)
 photo IMGP2241_zpsxyvkaol1.jpg
One thing I have noticed about moths, is that in flight they often look like boring gray or tan blurs, but they bear beautiful patterns when still. In this case, Panthea furcilla*, the pattern is a tree bark camouflage. The larva of this moth feeds on the needles of pines, spruces, and other conifers.

*Panthea is from Greek, meaning "of all gods" or something to that effect. Furcilla = "little fork," doubtlessly referring to a feature that only an entomologist could detect or appreciate.
urbpan: (dandelion)
 photo IMGP2248_zps2u13hjsv.jpg
Let this moth be a warning to you: be gentle when you boop a snoot. This litter moth (so called they are found in, and probably feed in the leaf litter) is known as Zancognatha, which means "sickle-jaw." You can see the "upturned labial palpi," that the name refers to.
urbpan: (dandelion)
 photo IMGP2234_zpsxann4msm.jpg
A lovely cream colored moth with a blue stripe on its pronotum--this was our most exciting moth for much of our bug night. It might have been more interesting as a caterpillar. This moth Halysidota* sp., is a tussock moth, meaning that the larva is a hairy caterpillar with bunches of longer hairs rising above the basic furriness. These are understood to be defensive setae,** preventing the wormlike young from becoming easy prey. When the caterpillar makes a cocoon, it incorporates some of the setae into the pupal case, providing, one supposes, an extra layer of protection.


* This one is fun. Apparently this has gone through several spelling changes, prompting one writer to fume: "Clearly .. it is no casual error of transcription but a rectification of Hübner's bad Greek. Authors of course are at perfect liberty to coin gibberish generic names and so far as my own private tastes are concerned I infinitely prefer a good sonorous gibberish name ... to the general run of would be Greek ones. But when a generic name is manifestly intended to be Greek and more especially when a Greek derivation is printed along with it so as to prevent us which we should otherwise often do from considering it as gibberish most writers conceive that they are at liberty to spell it correctly and reduce it to something like a grammatical form." The original spelling contains the word "halis" which is old Greek meaning "in abundance."
urbpan: (dandelion)
 photo IMGP2257_zps3ltjeiz0.jpg
You would be forgiven if you thought this little orange and white moth had a bit of a tropical look to it. In fact, it's thought to native to Florida and points south, its caterpillar feeding on a tropical plant called a paradise tree. So what is it doing in the temperate urban forest of Boston? It turns out that another plant, the tree-of-heaven Ailanthus altissima, is suitable food. That turns out to be great luck for the moth now called the Ailanthus webworm Atteva aurea* since the tree-of-heaven is an invasive urban dweller that cracks sidewalks and colonizes vacant lots. The moth can't tolerate our nasty winters, and so migrates up from Florida each summer.



*Atteva = Origin unclear. Speculation: perhaps from Modern English (though obsolete, and dialectical) atter, that from Old English aettor poison, pus, plus Greek suffix eu (or ev) good, well, with an adjectival ending -a. (English atter poison is not related to adder, the snake, incidentally.) This seems semi-plausible, given that the author of the genus was English. Aurea means "golden."
urbpan: (dandelion)
 photo IMGP2268_zps3puscqw0.jpg
Sometimes the animals that come to the illuminated sheets at bug night are NOT moths. The moth-lovers might not be excited about it, but those of us who haven't memorized the family names and are baffled by the finer points of micro-leps are pretty happy. This little cutie-pie--a brown lacewing (family Hemerobiidae*) is a vicious predator, spending the day roaming plant stems to gobble up aphids.


* "day-living family"

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