Moth Wings - Strategies To Avoid Predation

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/

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

fuzzy silk moth

Poodle moth doodle (not the free-use bookmark)

Is the atlas moth really the biggest moth out there? (spoiler alert: there are different ways of measuring 'big')

Largest by wingspan - the white witch moth:

Wingspan: around 30 cm max

Fun fact: despite its large size the eggs, pupa and caterpillars of this moth remain undocumented. Check out the white witch watch for more info.

Largest by wing area - the female hercules moth:

Wing surface area: 300 square cm

Largest by weight - the female giant wood moth:

Weight: 30 g max

Largest overall - the female atlas moth:

Wingspan: largest recorded 30 cm

Wing area: 157 square cm, according to this site, which doesn't cite any source for that info

Although it's listed in the guiness book of world records as the largest moth, I'm confused as to why that is. The wingspan of the white witch moth is bigger, and the wingspan of the hercules moth is bigger, according to Insect Biodiversity: Science and Society by Robert G. Foottit and Peter H. Adler. The wing surface area of the hercules moth is also bigger according to Amazing Numbers in Biology by Rainier Flindt.

Note on conflicting information: Many of the general use sites I happened upon while trying to find sources closer to the primary source incorrectly quoted this article, sometimes saying Attacus caesar has the second largest wingspan of all moths, and sometimes incorrectly quoting the atlas' moth wingspan as 24 cm or 27 cm when it was 262 mm/26.2 cm in the original article. In my opinion, the atlas moth can't rightfully be called the largest overall moth, but it does hold the record, with the largest wingspan recorded being 30 cm (in the guiness world record).

Image sources:

[1] [2] [3] [4]

Information sources:

White witch wingspan

Hercules moth wing surface area and wingspan

Giant wood moth weight

Atlas moth

May I introduce you to these amazing textile sculptures by Yumi Okita:

The effort!! The texture!!! Super cool :)

Her etsy:

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