27 August 2021

Moths are eaten by birds, small rodents, bats, and lizards and are especially vulnerable during the day. To avoid predation many hide in plain sight. Here are four moths that use camouflage to survive.

The peppered moth (Biston betularia) is a camouflage master. The adults look like bark, the caterpillars (above) look like twigs.

Research indicates that the caterpillars can sense the twig’s color with their skin and match their body color to the background to protect themselves from predators.

— Wikipedia: peppered moth

You can see an adult peppered moth on a plain surface …

… but on birch bark you (mostly) don’t. This particular moth could have roosted on a darker spot but then we’d think the photo was just bark.

The buff tip moth (Phalera bucephala), native to Eurasia, is visible on a mothing cloth …

… but matches a birch twig in the wild.

The pandora sphinx moth (Eumorpha pandorus) is large and easy to see on plain surfaces.

Here’s why he is green.

And finally, this is the moth that inspired this article.

Oxydia angusta moth.

(Photo Mileniusz Spanowicz) pic.twitter.com/iyUgXQg3n4

— Weird Animals (@Weird_AnimaIs) August 10, 2021

Now you see me. Now you don’t.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons; click on the captions to see the originals)

18 August 2021

Here’s a beautiful moth we wouldn’t see if it weren’t for an invasive tree.

The ailanthus webworm moth (Atteva aurea) is a tropical ermine moth that relied on the paradise tree (Simarouba glauca) and Simarouba amara as its larval hosts. In the U.S. this limited the moth’s range to South Florida.

However in 1784 we began importing an Asian member of the Simaroubaceae family, the tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima), because we thought it was pretty. We sold it as a landscaping tree for over 100 years. It became invasive and spread across the US and into Canada (map by state/province below).

Ailanthus is also a host for Atteva aurea so the moth spread with the tree, earning it the common name Ailanthus webworm moth. This daytime moth now ranges from Florida to Texas and across eastern North America to Minnesota and Ontario.

It is really very beautiful …

… and tiny.

I’m not surprised I haven’t seen one yet.

16 August 2021

Last week was hot in Pittsburgh in both temperature and humidity. On mornings when it was only 71 degrees the dewpoint was also 71 so it felt oppressive. Under the circumstances birds are scarce but insects are not.

Above, a Zabulon skipper (Lon zabulon) butterfly that was sipping on ironweed flew over to land on my thumb. It was hard to take its picture without scaring it away.

Ironweed florets are shaped like tubes, perfect for the skipper’s probocis.

Hickory tussock moth caterpillars are easy to find this month.

And two kinds of insects are attacking the Japanese knotweed — aphids and Japanese beetles.

It is very fitting that an invasive Japanese beetle eats an invasive Japanese plant.

Insects are busy. They like it hot.

(photos by Kate St. John)

9 August 2021

The birds stopped singing weeks ago but the air is filled with the sound of bugs. One of them is the red-headed bush cricket (Phyllopalpus pulchellus) otherwise known as the Handsome Trig.

If you find a handsome trig you can see the beauty that gave him his name. Unfortunately he’s so tiny that we rarely see him.

However, you can hear him. He sings very loudly at 7000 Hertz, often from a Japanese honeysuckle thicket.

I say “You can hear him” because I cannot. I’ve lost my hearing above 6,000 Hertz so I view his voice as a spectrogram on the Spectroid app. The very bright white-orange stripe at 7406 Hertz is the LOUD sound of the handsome trig in the video above. The fainter line at 4,000 hertz is quieter and the only part of his sound that I can hear.

Listen for this handsome bug.

Tell me if he’s loud. 🙂

(photo from Wikimedia Commons, videos embedded from YouTube; click on the captions or the YouTube logo to see the originals)

27 June 2021

It’s turning out to be a big year in Pittsburgh for a small black bug with a long snout. Perhaps you’ve seen one on your window or lawn furniture. Perhaps one has landed on you. Don’t worry. It’s not a tick. It’s a yellow-poplar weevil.

Yellow-poplar weevils (Odontopus calceatus) are vegetarians that feed on the leaves of tuliptrees (i.e. yellow-poplars), sassafras and cucumber magnolias.  The adults make small holes in the leaves. The larvae mine the midrib. They are harmless to humans and not even that bad for trees.

While these weevils do harm foliage they shouldn’t affect the overall health and longevity of established trees. They are often more of a nuisance than a serious problem and generally only create aesthetic harm.

— Wikipedia: Yellow-poplar weevil

Yellow-poplar weevils usually hang out on plants and are kept in check by predators but in a “big year” there are so many adults that we notice them in late June and early July during their mating flight.

One landed on me yesterday but I wasn’t worried. It’s not a tick. Ticks don’t fly and they have eight legs (like spiders) not six.

UPDATE, 28 June: The weevils can fly at night. At 4am I briefly opened a window without a screen and later found a couple of weevils indoors.

UPDATE, 1 July: Today the weevils were flying and landing everywhere at Heinz Chapel steps.

TICK WARNING: 2021 is also a big year for black-legged ticks in the Pittsburgh area, the ticks that transmit Lyme disease.

Lyme disease has been an epidemic here since 2018 but many people don’t realize the dangers. Sometimes a Lyme test comes back negative so the symptoms of fatigue, aches, persistent fever and a body rash are mistreated for weeks until Lyme is finally diagnosed.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Spray your clothes and right after you spend time outdoors be sure to check yourself for ticks especially in your hair, behind your ears, etc. Here’s a very tiny tick Bob Mulvihill found on 18 June. They’re out there!

(photos by Kate St. John, embedded Facebook photo by Robert Mulvihill)