#mothodon — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #mothodon, aggregated by home.social.
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Here's another elegant NZ moth for you. This one's called the Alpine Treasure Owlet (*Ichneutica maya*).
It's mostly seen up in the mountains in the South Island but also in the mountains of the lower North Island. I saw this one up at Boyle Village in the North Canterbury Southern Alps.
As is the case with many NZ moths, the "life history in the wild of this species is unknown, nor has its larval host species been confirmed" (quoting its Wikipedia page, which is referencing Robert Hoare's 2019 Fauna Series revision of the genus). We've got 144 observations of it so far on #iNaturalist.
https://www.inaturalist.nz/observations/342867458
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mollivan_jon/55146832010#mothodon #Lepidoptera #moths #Noctuidae #Ichneutica #nz #entomology
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Introducing *Austramathes coelacantha*!
I uploaded this moth to iNaturalist from my moth lighting last month in the NZ mountains. It's now the first iNat record of this NZ endemic moth, which was first described as a species in 2017.
This adds to the five records of the species on GBIF from the NZ Arthropod Collection (four specimens from 1975 and one from 2023).
It's known (so far) from shrublands and beech forests of central and eastern South Island. Its caterpillars have not been confirmed yet, although they're expected to be on *Melicytus* (mahoe and relatives).
Big thanks go to NZ moth expert Neville Hudson for identifying this. Neville has so far made 171,359(!) species identifications on iNaturalist, almost all moths, and all done for free. It's an extraordinary contribution to our knowledge of NZ moths.
https://inaturalist.nz/observations/338636198
#mothodon #moths #Lepidoptera #nz #iNaturalist #iNaturalistNZ #GBIF #entomology #CitizenScience
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Here's another of the six new moth species to my garden this year, in Ōtautahi-Christchurch, NZ. This one had me puzzled until NZ moth expert Neville Hduson from Auckland identified it this morning on #iNaturalist.
It's the Australian Wattle Gall Miner, *Polysoma eumetalla*, and this is the third record of it on #GBIF from the South Island.
It's a pretty wee thing but easily overlooked because it's tiny (see the second photo of it next to a green garden looper moth).
Remarkably, its caterpillars make their living mining inside galls on some Australian wattle trees, which in NZ are formed by the Australian rust fungus *Uromycladium tepperianum*.
#mothodon #moths #Lepidoptera #nz #entomology #insects #iNaturalistNZ
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Each season I do four nights of moth lighting in my garden in suburban Ōtautahi-Christchurch, NZ. My summer moth lighting this year started on Saturday. I photograph every moth that settles at my light and today I've been uploading my photos to #iNaturalist.
I've been doing this consistently each autumn since 2015 and every season each year since (at least) 2021. You might think I would have found all the moth species that visit my garden, but no.
So far I've finished uploading Saturday's moth photos and have found six new species to our garden. Here are four of them.
There's the endemic moth *Gymnobathra hamatella*:
https://inaturalist.nz/observations/337290749There's the "nationally vulnerable" endemic species *Gadira leucophthalma*:
https://inaturalist.nz/observations/337263605There's the endemic Clematis triangle *Deana hybreasalis*:
https://inaturalist.nz/observations/337285888Also, less ideal, there's the introduced Case-bearing Clothes Moth *Tinea pellionella*:
https://inaturalist.nz/observations/337285916#mothodon #moths #Lepidoptera #Ōtautahi #Christchurch #NZ #insects #EcologicalMonitoring
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I'm thinking more about the life cycle of these cinnabar moths. It's quite remarkable. The eggs get laid late spring and take about 2 weeks to hatch. The caterpillars eat for about a month through the summer. They then pupate, and wait.
And wait.
And wait.
They wait through all of Autumn and Winter and early Spring.
Then, the adult moths emerge to mate and lay eggs and the cycle starts again.
They're dormant as pupae for about 10 months of every year!
https://digitallibrary.landcareresearch.co.nz/digital/api/collection/p20022coll21/id/41/download
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Look! Cinnabar moth!
Last summer I was surprised to find cinnabar moth caterpillars feeding on the native pahokoraka, Senecio quadridentatus, in the middle of Christchurch city, NZ. Cinnabar moths were released to control the European pasture weed ragwort back in the 1940s.
I collected four caterpillars and fed them on pahokoraka leaves until they pupated on 16 January. I put them on some scrunched up newsprint in a plastic container and put that outside in a shaded area of our garden. Today, three adult moths emerged.
They're day-flying moths which retain the poisons of their host plants and advertise that to would-be predators with their bright colours,
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Look! Cinnabar moth!
Last summer I was surprised to find cinnabar moth caterpillars feeding on the native pahokoraka, Senecio quadridentatus, in the middle of Christchurch city, NZ. Cinnabar moths were released to control the European pasture weed ragwort back in the 1940s.
I collected four caterpillars and fed them on pahokoraka leaves until they pupated on 16 January. I put them on some scrunched up newsprint in a plastic container and put that outside in a shaded area of our garden. Today, three adult moths emerged.
They're day-flying moths which retain the poisons of their host plants and advertise that to would-be predators with their bright colours,
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Look! Cinnabar moth!
Last summer I was surprised to find cinnabar moth caterpillars feeding on the native pahokoraka, Senecio quadridentatus, in the middle of Christchurch city, NZ. Cinnabar moths were released to control the European pasture weed ragwort back in the 1940s.
I collected four caterpillars and fed them on pahokoraka leaves until they pupated on 16 January. I put them on some scrunched up newsprint in a plastic container and put that outside in a shaded area of our garden. Today, three adult moths emerged.
They're day-flying moths which retain the poisons of their host plants and advertise that to would-be predators with their bright colours,
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Look! Cinnabar moth!
Last summer I was surprised to find cinnabar moth caterpillars feeding on the native pahokoraka, Senecio quadridentatus, in the middle of Christchurch city, NZ. Cinnabar moths were released to control the European pasture weed ragwort back in the 1940s.
I collected four caterpillars and fed them on pahokoraka leaves until they pupated on 16 January. I put them on some scrunched up newsprint in a plastic container and put that outside in a shaded area of our garden. Today, three adult moths emerged.
They're day-flying moths which retain the poisons of their host plants and advertise that to would-be predators with their bright colours,
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Look! Cinnabar moth!
Last summer I was surprised to find cinnabar moth caterpillars feeding on the native pahokoraka, Senecio quadridentatus, in the middle of Christchurch city, NZ. Cinnabar moths were released to control the European pasture weed ragwort back in the 1940s.
I collected four caterpillars and fed them on pahokoraka leaves until they pupated on 16 January. I put them on some scrunched up newsprint in a plastic container and put that outside in a shaded area of our garden. Today, three adult moths emerged.
They're day-flying moths which retain the poisons of their host plants and advertise that to would-be predators with their bright colours,
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Here are four visitors to our house this week. It's the first time I've seen this wee native moth species, Crypsitricha mesotypa.
I just checked and I'm now up to 101 species, mostly insects, that I've found and photographed inside our house.
#nz #nature #iNaturalist #insects #entomology #myhome #mothodon
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I like this article in Nature Canada celebrating Canada’s (and North America’s) largest moth, the Cecropia moth. It *is* an excellent moth.
“Adult Cecropia moths last about two weeks. They can’t eat during this stage, since they have no digestive system or moveable mouth parts. About the only thing they can do is mate! An adult Cecropia moth is basically a work of art designed to create more works of art.”
https://naturecanada.ca/news/blog/the-cecropia-moth-art-on-the-wing/
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One of the recent iNaturalist highlights from Banks Peninsula is this little moth, that Mel Whiting photographed in the Port Hills above Taylor’s Mistake at the end of May. It was photographed visiting a yellow flower of the native oxalis, *Oxalis exilis*. They weren’t sure what it was and uploaded it to iNat to find out.
Thanks to the identifications and comments by NZ moth experts Neville Hudson and Robert Hoare, it turns out to be a rare, and still undescribed, endemic NZ moth species, currently only known as *Scythris* “stripe”.
Robert commented “Yes, amazing discovery! I think maybe only the 4th ever seen.”
Two of those four observations were made on #iNaturalist, the other being a moth I found in the Port Hills above near the Sign of the Kiwi back in May 2022.
Every observation counts, especially for rarely seen species like these species that we know so little about.
https://inaturalist.nz/observations/285550497
#Lepidoptera #mothodon #nz #CitizenScience #RareSpecies #iNaturalistNZ
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Today in Cinnabar Moth News!
3 of 4 caterpillars I collected on 6 Jan on the NZ native pahohoraka pupated today. The 4th is a prepupa. Oddly, all have fed solely on pahohoraka (Senecio quadridentatus).
The small caterpillar I collected in Somerfield on European groundel has moulted.
I found *more* caterpillars in the city today, including on the South African gravel groundsel, maybe a new host association. https://inaturalist.nz/observations/258633900
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Ohhhhhh dang we didn't even hashtag our moth in a pot :(