Miserably, Our Dog Louis Collapsed And Was Found To Have Cancer Last Monday, The Same Day There Was An

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Louis Needs Cancer Surgery, organized by Leonie Bunch

Louis is a 14 year old poodle x papillon x Jim Henson Creature Shop creation living with Leo … Leonie Bunch needs your support for Louis Ne

Miserably, our dog Louis collapsed and was found to have cancer last Monday, the same day there was an unexpected human death in my immediate family. Louis had a cutting edge new surgery to save his life but needs much more help, and we are out of money.

Please read our story and consider sharing, donating or even lending us some funds that we can return down the line. We really aren't able to deal with the fallout of this crisis in any way right now.

Moth wings - strategies to avoid predation

Hide and seek (cryptic colouration) and/or hide and seek but I dress up as the thing I'm hiding on (Wasmannian mimicry)

Pictured: a peppered moth and a wave sphinx moth

'Yeah I'm poisonous, look at my scary bright colors' (aposematism) and/or 'Yeah I'm poisonous, I'm similarly coloured to another poisonous moth which you've eaten before so no need to eat me' (Mullerian mimicry)

Pictured: a female leopard magpie moth, a garden tiger moth and several six-spot burnet moths

'Duh I'm poisonous!! I look like [insert other poisonous insect or animal], but please don't test your theory by biting me otherwise you'll find out I'm not actually poisonous' (Batesian mimicry)

Included in the medley: a wasp mimic (male red oak clearwing), a bumblebee mimic (snowberry clearwing) and a spider mimic (a petrophila species)

Image sources:

Sidenote: I hate formatting posts on mobile eeghhhh

https://le.kloofconservancy.org.za/lockdown-an-opportunity-to-appreciate-your-local-biodiversity/

Oh to have that bookmark

Jeannette Klute. Luna Moth, 1952-1954. Dye imbibition print.

Lovely Moth Photos by Emmet Gowin

Undescribed Megalopygidae moth

Cresera intense

Family: Erebidae

Distribution: French Guyana, Brazil, Amazon region

Eubergia caisa

Family: Saturniidae

Distribution: the Cerrado (Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil)

Psilacron gordiana

Family: Notodontidae

Distribution: Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia

Vine Sphinx (Eumorpha vitis)

Family: Sphingidae

Distribution: Northern Argentina, Central America, West Indies, Mexico, Southern USA

Undescribed Pterophoridae moth

Neorcarnegia basirei

Family: Saturniidae

Distribution: unknown

Psilopygida walkeri

Family: Saturniidae

Distribution: unknown

Orodesma apicina

Family: Erebidae

Distribution: Cuba, Central America and Florida

Moth???

In the article I drew these photos from it says it's called Mosera apollinairei but I can't find any info on them

Moths are currently undergoing a lot of taxonomic revision so that might be why

The article says Dognin discovered them, and he worked mainly on South American moths so yeah it's probably from around there.

Natural Selection and the Case of the Peppered Moth

If you're anything like me and you spend a lot of time talking about Interesting Facts and Things to anyone who will listen, you may have heard a slightly warped account of the story of the peppered moth. Maybe someone said something like: "Oh yeah and in England there was this moth that turned black during the industrial revolution due to all the coal dust in the air". Which is... not exactly true.

Let me start the story from the beginning. Before the industrial revolution, peppered moths (Biston betularia) were distributed across England, Europe and North America. They existed in 3 morphs: typica (mostly white), carbonaria (mostly black) and insularia (inbetween). Note: I'm mainly going to talk about the typica and the carbonaria morph here.

Before the industrial revolution, the typica morph was the predominant morph. Peppered moths lived in forests filled with light trees and lots of lichen, a good place for a typica morph to blend in. The carbonaria morphs were living life on hard mode, though. They did not blend in, and were more easily picked out by predators like birds. Below you can see how well a typica morph blends into lichen.

Then the fire nation attacked. Jk, then came the industrial revolution. Factories were pumping out coal fumes into the air, covering forests nearby with coal dust and killing the lichen that grew on them. In these forests, the carbonaria morph blended in better. Predators began to pick out typica morphs more often. And so, carbonaria morphs became the predominant morph in forests near industrialized areas.

Naturalists, noticing this, wanted an adequate answer on why this was happening. In the 1950s Bernard Davis Kettlewell used various methods to test the hypothesis that it was natural selection. And indeed it was. Typica morphs were 2x more likely to be eaten in a polluted forest than carbonaria morphs, and vice versa.

This phenomenon was so common, and observed in many other moth species across industrialized areas, that it was even given a name: industrial melanism.

So there you go. The full story of the peppered moth :)

Oh and I should add that in areas where the effects of industrialization were reversed, the typica morph once again becomes more common.

Sources:

Peppered moths: moth life cycle

Peppered moths: natural selection

Peppered moths: dr ketllewell