This Monday’s moth is a duo ofSchinia villosa (ヤガ科) resting on what I am assuming is their host plant (Erigeronsp.). I snapped this shot around 9,000 feet up on the Kaibab plateau in Northern Arizona last month. A fire must have burned the area a few years ago because the wildflowers were thick amongst charred remains of ponderosa pines and these moths were everywhere.
ANSWER: これは簡単ではありませんでした – しかし、この大規模かつ美しい蛾は、オーストラリアからだったし、家族の中でXyloryctidae (Philaristasp.). We have a handful of representatives of this group here in the US and Ted MacRaeover on Beetles in the Bushhas a few great photographs of them. Somehow I think we got the short end of the stick because this family reaches the peak of its staggering diversity in Australia. It’s amazing to me that this animal is related to the tiny grey flower moths we have!
Jim Hayden was closest with the guess of an Australian Oecophorid – which I have photographed for next week.
If you’re interested in learning more about this family go check out theオーストラリアのXyloryctine蛾blog!
This week I’m going to make the moth into a challenge. Who can tell me what家族this is? Any takers on genus/species? My only hint is that this is a pretty hefty sized moth measuring in at over 53mm and it’s from the California Academy collections.
These large and interesting Lycidae beetles (Lycus fernandezi) were abundant in south eastern Arizona a few weeks ago. Constantly flying between flowers and moist sand they were making for easy photography targets. I thought to myself “here is a great opportunity to catch a beetle taking off!”.
Wait for it…
Lycus fernandezi (Lycidae)
Wait for it…
Lycus fernandezi (Lycidae)
Crap.
Lycus fernandezi (Lycidae)
If it hadn’t been 105 degrees out and I didn’t have a cloud of flies clinging to my face I would have fixed my camera settings and waited for another chance. But this is all my patience could bear – after all it’s just a beetle!
今週の蛾はフィリピンからのダンスのマイクロのビデオです (ウォーレンLaurdeで撮影). あなたは疑うかもしれませんが、これはかなり壮大な逆立ちで終わる交配ディスプレイである. ダンスやディスプレイの動作を持っている他のmicrolepsがたくさんあります, but there are almost no other videos online and few as high quality as this one. I am thinking this is a Cosmopterigidae, something approaching the genusRessia. I am unable to find confirmed records of anything near this genus from SE Asia (and nothing in theMicrolepidoptera of the Philippine Islands) – but doing a google search I did find another image of what might be this same moth!
この月曜日の蛾はアリゾナ山から壮大な種である – チリカフア多座, シャクガ. この種のための唯一知られている場所は、上記のチリカフア山脈の最上部にある 9,000 フィート (ちょうどカリカリにbrunedた). Hopefully the fire was not entirely devastating and the population will rebound in the years to come. 前 2009 this moth was known from fewer than 10 標本, all captured at the slightly lower elevation on Onion Saddle in the Chiricahuas. In the spring of 2009 access to a gated road lead to the collection of dozens of specimens in a single night. All of the previous records had been rare strays that had flown down to 8500′ – but the simple act of driving up an extra1000′ 500’put the collector in the ideal habitat and surprisingly this moth was common! This seems to be par for the course with most insects, very few are actually rare while the rest are just difficult to capture. Either they don’t come to lights, don’t forage within arm’s length, or only live in hard to access habitats. Once you discover their biology (or get lucky) you usually can find the animal in abundance.
You might have also noticed the regular posting of Monday Moth – I’ve been out in the field for the last two weeks and had a stack of scheduled posts. I should start mixing things up more now!