Pretty Moth - Tumblr Posts

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

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

Her etsy:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/irohandbags/sold?ref=shopinfo_sales_leftnav

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

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.

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/

Moths?

Moths? Moths. Moths moths moths :)

If you live in the uk and want to identify a moth you saw, or if you don't but just want to appreciate some cool uk moths, this site is for you

It lets you enter country, size, colour and any special features of the moth you want to find

^ a little fella I found while looking around on it (merveille du jour)

Love love love these spaceship lookin silly guys

Image source: x

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

this is a pic from a while ago, but I've always kinda wondered what it was. could you identify it? found in Kentucky, not sure how specific you need for location :)

This is a very pretty female imperial moth!! The males look similar just with a bit more brown on them

The caterpillars are also quite cute and can vary in colour according to which stage of growth they're in or which morph they are

this little butterfly is Sarota acantus, a fingernail-sized work of art found in Central and South America. you can tell this one is a female since she’s walking on all six legs—male metalmarks have a greatly reduced first pair!

Five-spot Burnet

A 5 spot burnet moth, nestled down amongst the plant stems in the meadow between Short Wood and Southwick Wood.

I found a luna moth at work today!!

Moth Of The Day #272

Coenobasis amoena

From the limacodidae family. There is little to no information recorded about this moth.

Image sources: [1] [2]

Moth Of The Day #291

Larch Tolype / Larch Lappet Moth

Tolype laricis

From the lasiocampidae family. They can be found in eastern North America.

Image source: [1] [2]

Please could you show the world my favourite moth, Moma alpium, the Scarce merveille du jour? Its very special to me, and I hope others can appreciate it too.

Moth Of The Day #270

Scarce Merveille du Jour

Moma alpium

From the noctuidae family. They have a wingspan of 30-35 mm. They can be found in the Palearctic Realm.

Image sources: [1] [2]

Moth Of The Day #251

Marbled Emperor

Heniocha dyops

From the saturniidae family. They can be found in  Angola, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa and Tanzania.

Image sources: [1] [2] [3] [4]

Moth Of The Day #212

Lily Moth / Indian Lily Moth

Polytela gloriosae

From the noctuidae family. They have a wingspan of about 29 mm. They are found in Sri Lanka and possibly Indonesia.

Image sources: [1] [2]

Atlas Moth (Attacus atlas) ♂

My heart melts every time I see one of my huge moths clean their antennae like a cat washing their face. 

If you haven't done them already could you do the Picasso Moth? (Baorisa hieroglyphica)

(Also I just wanted to say your blog is an absolute delight to scroll through! Genuinely brightens up my day seeing the posts pop up on my feed)

Moth Of The Day #226

Picasso Moth

Baorisa hieroglyphica

From the erebidae family. They have a wingspan of approximately 50 mm. They can be found in northeastern India and Southeast Asia.

Image sources: [1] [2]

Moth Of The Day #222

Madagascan Sunset Moth

Chrysiridia rhipheus

From the uraniidae family. They have a wingspan of 7-11 cm. They inhabit a wide variety of habitatsd, from deciduous forests to rain forest regions. They are endemic to Masagascar.

Image sources: [1] [2]