#pterophoridae — Public Fediverse posts

This new record in #iNaturalist from last week near #Darwin NT seems to be the first image of a species that is barely identifiable from the original 2006 description. #Australia has six named #PlumeMoth species in the genus Xyroptila, but I'm only slowly and painfully working out the appearance of each of these.

https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations/390524305

#Lepidoptera #moth #Pterophoridae #entomology

Photo CC BY-SA Lachlan Copeland

#PlumeMoth #Pterophoridae #Moth #Lepidoptera #ArtWithOpenSource #Darktable #CCBYSA #Moths #Insect #Insects #InsectPhotography #Animal #Animals #AnimalPhotography #Wildlife #WildlifePhotography #Nature #NaturePhotography #Photo #Photography

I've been sorting the Australian #PlumeMoth specimens in the Australian National #Insect #Collection. #ANIC includes a few specimens collected in the wider region. One of them is this extraordinary plume moth collected by W.W. Brandt in July/August 1958 in Kiambaui / Kiambowe in north-eastern #PapuaNewGuinea. Sadly, it's not properly set, so it's hard to photograph well.

The location is here:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=kiambaui&zoom=9&minlon=139.39175736604636&minlat=-7.101001739522618&maxlon=146.6839326590151&maxlat=-3.0007513241170676#map=15/-5.70511/146.26395

The basic colour pattern is not uncommon here in #Australia in #Gelechioidea and #Tineidae, but I've never seen any plume moth with markings at all similar.

It will be a new species in the tribe #Platyptiliini, probably somewhere close to #Xyroptila.

#Lepidoptera #Pterophoridae #entomology #moth

Checking the #iNaturalist records for Australian #PlumeMoths in the genus #Hexadactilia, it seems there is an outlier that doesn't fit either of the two known species:

https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations/285825134

This is further north than the other known records of the genus from #Australia and has rather different markings. It may well be an #undescribed species. The only other possibility is a third species described from #Sabah in #Borneo, but I can't locate a copy of the relevant paper. It's from a 1995 issue of Entomologische Zeitschrift Frankfurt am Main:

Arenberger, E. (1995) Eine neue Art der Gattung Hexadactilia Fletcher, 1910 von Sabah. Ent. Z., Frankf. a. M. 105: 138-140

I've located a copy thanks to Petr Ustjuzhanin. Looking to see if it's a match.

#literature #LiteratureRequest #entomology #Lepidoptera #Pterophoridae #Queensland #taxonomy #biodiversity

I've been going through unsorted accessions in the #Australian National #Insect #Collection (#ANIC) here in Canberra to find any plume #moths (#Pterophoridae) and many-plume moths (#Alucitidae) before doing more work to revise the fauna of these two families.

Today, I found this specimen collected by David Rentz in #Kuranda #Queensland in 2007 - it's not a known named Australian species but it looks a close match for Platyptilia microbscura recorded only from #Misool, an island to the west of #NewGuinea:

https://www.papua-insects.nl/insect%20orders/Lepidoptera/Pterophoridae/Platyptilia/Platyptilia%20microbscura.htm

#entomology #Lepidoptera

I've been going through around 5000 #iNaturalist plume #moth records in #Australia that are not yet research grade and for which I'd not yet added identifications. Almost all the species here can be identified well from a good photo.

The most interesting discovery today was a handful of #caterpillar observations that clearly represent the first photos of the #larva of the common species Stangeia xerodes. See the explanation here:

https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations/190890238

#entomology #Lepidoptera #Pterophoridae

This #PlumeMoth species was previously last recorded in the ACT (as far as I know) back in 1950. I'd been thinking of planning visits to #Namadgi to look for it next summer, but I just found one in #NatureMapr identified (then) as Platyptilia celidotus. I added the identification and it's been accepted by others, so this record can now flow correctly into the #AtlasOfLivingAustralia and then @gbif

Stenoptilia leuconephes

https://canberra.naturemapr.org/sightings/4535301

#Lepidoptera #Pterophoridae #entomology

Emmelina monodactyla (Linnaeus, 1758)

Published under #CC0 here https://flic.kr/p/2rQgLcR

#Lepidoptera #Pterophoroidea #Pterophoridae #Pterophorinae #Oidaematophorini #Emmelina #Pentax #Macro #Moth #Animal #Wildlife #Nature #Mywork #Photography

@pirarucu

This one's one of the many rather similar American Hellinsia species.

If you consider #moths (and insects more widely), many seem to have evolved to look like anything other than an edible insect.

Many resemble bird droppings, broken twigs, dead leaves or something mouldy:

https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/taxa/205156-Cilix-glaucata
https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/taxa/55361-Phalera-bucephala
https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/taxa/345746-Falcaria-lacertinaria
https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/taxa/123022-Thyatira-batis

Others have transparent or trompe-l'oeil sections in their wings:

https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/taxa/257013-Psychophasma-erosa
https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations/1133796

Others mimic something dangerous:

https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/taxa/1648557-Musotima-instrumentalis
https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/taxa/354819-Sesia-apiformis

In other words, you can expect moths to resemble pretty much anything that hides their mothness.

For plume moths (#Pterophoridae), the posture and the (frequently) rolled wings make them look more like plant matter than an insect, but even these moths can sometimes be quite spectacular:

https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations/319357256

#Entomology #Lepidoptera #camouflage

I just saw this record in #iNaturalist:

https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations/200710267

It's the first in iNat for the plume #moth species Deuterocopus honoratus. Neither the #AtlasOfLivingAustralia nor @gbif currently has any records for the species. It may well be that this is the first record of the species since the type specimen was collected around Brisbane in March 1897. That specimen is in the Natural History Museum in London and clearly not one of those they have so far databased.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterocopus_honoratus

https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/9808840

https://bie.ala.org.au/species/https://biodiversity.org.au/afd/taxa/1b05e2a2-25fa-46bd-9b6f-ea18413b0cf3#overview

https://www.gbif.org/species/1858944

#Lepidoptera #Pterophoridae #PlumeMoth #entomology

Plume Moth, Gillmeria ochrodactyla Canon 400D EF 100 2.8 f/8 1/125 iso: 400 MIlovice, Czech Republic 7/20/2010 #MothsMatter #plumeMoths #Lepidoptera #Pterophoridae #moths #insects #invertebrates #macro #grasslands

Google has selected a #PlumeMoth (#Lepidoptera: #Pterophoridae: Pterophorus pentadactyla) to represent the #insect order #Zoraptera.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Zoraptera

This surprised me greatly, but it seems zorapterans are "commonly known as angel insects" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoraptera), which was an even bigger surprise, and the plume moth image has been tagged "angel insect". After all, it is white and feathery and presumably suitable for inspirational posters.

Bring on the AI-powered knowledgeverse ...

Is #MothMonday a thing here? This is a mousy plume moth (Lioptilodes albistriolatus), a tiny species often found in this erect posture. It can do the typical "T" posture, too, like most #Pterophoridae. Wingspan is approximately 1 cm.

#Lepidoptera #entomology #PlumeMoth

Each night I run an automated #insect light here in Canberra using a #RaspberryPi, Logitech BRIO #webcam, UV LEDs and #OpenCV image segmentation. Some example images from the night of 3/4 November: Porela delineata (#Lasiocampidae), Stenoptilia zophodactylus (#Pterophoridae), Thallarcha partita (#Erebidae, #Arctiinae) and Exaireta spinigera (#Stratiomyidae).

My hope is to build a large enough set of identified images to attempt to train a #model and move towards automated #timeseries capture.