First, the orchid: 

Angraecum sesquipedale, the Madagascan star orchid, is a species endemic to Madagascar. It was first discovered in 1798 by French botanist Louis-Marie Aubert du Petit-Thouars. The flower is bright white and has a nectar spur that is nearly a foot long. A nectar spur is a long tubular part of a flower that houses nectar at the very bottom. In flowers that feature nectar spurs, only pollinators with beaks or probosces long enough to reach to the bottom are able to drink nectar and pollinate the flower.

In 1862, years after Thouars discovered it, Darwin was sent a specimen of the orchid. He famously wrote in a letter to a friend, “Good heavens, what insect can suck it?!” Then in his book, On the Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilised by Insects, he predicted that there must exist an insect with a proboscis long enough to reach to the base of the nectar spur. He had no idea what insect but he thought a sphingid would be a likely candidate given that many species possess long probosces.

Now, the moth:

In the 1830s, entomologists had discovered a sphinx moth in Africa with a very long proboscis, but it wasn’t until 1903 that one was discovered from Madagascar. The entomologists describing it named the moth Xanthopan morgani praedicta in honor of Darwin’s prediction.

BUT an interaction between the orchid and hawmoth had not yet been witnessed by humans. In 1992 an X. morganii praedicta was found carrying A. sesquipedale pollinia (orchid pollen packets) confirming it as a visitor to the orchid. That same year – one hundred and thirty years after Darwin’s original prediction, a team of entomologists led by L.T. Wasserthal of the University of Erlangen (Germany) witnessed the moth visiting the orchid. In 2004, the interaction was captured on video by Philip DeVries of the University of New Orleans.

National Moth Week 2015 (July 18-26) is just around the corner! Register a public or private event here.

But did you know that odor pollution can adversely affect moths as well? We already know that moths are amazing at chemosensing – some species can detect female pheromones from miles away. Many pollinating moths, especially hawkmoths, use volatile chemical emissions (aka “smells”) from plants to locate flowers to visit to drink nectar. Just like with pheromones, they can detect these chemicals over several miles.

Recently, entomologists at the University of Arizona found that competing odors from human pollutants like car exhaust can affect olfactory sensing in Manduca sexta, inhibiting them from sensing floral odors. This finding has obvious moth conservation implications and the researchers are investigating whether other insects are affected by odor pollution as well.

National Moth Week 2015 (July 18-26) is just around the corner! Register a public or private event here.

In evolutionary biology, mimicry is the imitation of one species by another species that results in protection from predators to one or both of the species. Stories of mimicry are abundant in the natural world. Mimicry can take several forms:

Batesian mimicry occurs when mimics model harmful (toxic or otherwise dangerous) species.

Mullerian mimicry occurs when lots of harmful/toxic species looking like one another to amplify “signals” to would-be predators (i.e. the more times/place/ways a predator encounters a similar pattern or coloration that signifies danger, the faster it learns avoidance). One very famous example of Mullerian mimicry is between monarch and viceroy butterflies, both of which contain toxins that make them distasteful to predators.

Crypsis occurs when mimics imitate backgrounds to blend in and hide from predators. This is generally called Mullerian mimicry and is a form of protective mimicry.

Predatory mimicry occurs when dangerous species mimic harmless species to fool prey.

Insectivorous birds are one of the main predators of moths. Insectivorous birds won’t  eat a hummingbird, hence looking like a bird protects Hemaris from predation. In the case of H. diffinis (the bumblebee mimic), bumblebees can sting so they are mimicking a species that can protect itself (even though the moth itself cannot sting or even bite). Another explanation for why they look like hummingbirds could just be a case of convergent evolution – both organisms are evolved for nectar drinking and hovering flight, so they look alike. They share some nectar resources with hummingbirds but that would probably be the only habitat overlap between them.

In the US, we’ve got the genus Hemaris, commonly called clearwings or hummingbird moths. In addition to being diurnal, members of this genus are mimics of hummingbirds and bumblebees – which I’ll cover in a subsequent post. They were also the subject of part of my dissertation research, and so are some of my absolute favorites There are 4 species of Hemaris in the United states and 24 found around the world.

Another North American diurnal hawkmoth is Amphion floridensis, the Nessus sphinx. This species occurs primarily in the eastern US, but can be found as far south as Mexico.

Macroglossum is a Eurasian diurnal genus. Like Hemaris, they are often called hummingbird moths or bee moths.

Cephonodes is a genus found in Africa, Southeast Asia and Australia. They look remarkably similar to Hemaris.

Many moths species straddle the line between diurnal and nocturnal. Species that fly at dusk are referred to as crepuscular. One example is the always lovely Hyles lineata which is found all over the U.S.

Many of these diurnal moths play an important role as pollinators. But why have they “chosen” this diurnal lifestyle over the more common nocturnal one? It’s tough to say why any species takes one evolutionary pathway over another. One explanation could be that there are more abundant floral resources during the day so the abundance of food may have been a driver for their shift to a diurnal lifestyle.

National Moth Week 2015 (July 18-26) is just around the corner! Register a public or private event here.

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Manduca sexta, the tobacco hornworm is one of the most recognizable hawkmoths around. The adults are large and have colorfully striped bodies. The caterpillars feed on solanaceous plants like tobacco and tomatoes so they are often found in backyard gardens. Although the caterpillars can be pests, the adults act as pollinators.

 M. sexta also plays a role in laboratory settings. The caterpillars are used as model organisms. Model organisms are species that are studied in order to understand biology. Discoveries made in model organisms can provide insight into the biology of other organisms, mostly humans.

M. sexta  is a good model organism because the caterpillars are large, have a quick life cycle and are easy to rear in the lab. They have been used in studies of neurobiology, physiology flight mechanics, nicotine resistance, and embryological development.

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But did you know that their flight dynamics are of interest to engineers and scientists working in the field of aeronautics? These researchers study the flight characteristics as well as the wing structure of hawkmoths (and several other insects such as bees, flies, and dragonflies) to develop tiny devices called micro-aerial vehicles (MAVs). The design MAVs often combines the expertise of teams of evolutionary biologists, entomologists, engineers and computer scientists. When insects are the inspiration for MAVs they are sometimes called “entomopters” (which is definitely my favorite new word).

MAVS can be used to remotely observe areas that may be hazardous for humans to enter, such as in search and rescue missions, environmental monitoring, aerial photography and surveillance.

The use of hawkmoth wings as models for MAVs is an example of biomimicry – which is the imitation of natural systems, elements or organisms to solve complex human problems.

Examples of biomimicry can be found across diverse fields as surfaces that imitate shark skin, nanotubes that inspired by viral structure, adhesives based on sticky gecko feet, display technology that mimics the structural color of morpho butterfly wings, spider silk as the inspiration for bullet-proof fabrics and on and on and on.

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Since moths lack jaws and possess a proboscis as a mouthpart, they don’t eat any of the pollen that collects on their bodies when they visit flowers. They use their proboscis to collect nectar only  – this is in contrast to bees and beetles that directly consume pollen as well as use it to provision their nests. Hawkmoth probosces can be very long – in some cases several times the length of the moth’s body. Later I’ll do a post on a famous example of this.

Hawkmoths can’t visit just any flower to drink nectar. Since the majority of hawkmoths are nocturnal, they are restricted to visiting flowers that are open and producing nectar at night. Most people are aware that some species of flower close at night, but did you know that flowers can produce varying amounts of nectar depending on the time of day?

Flowers visited by hawkmoths also tend to be white (or very pale yellow or pink), colors that are easily visible to moths flying in the dark. Hawkmoth-pollinated flowers also tend to be heavily-scented, as these insects have evolved excellent olfactory systems to locate flowers at night – they can detect scents from flowers up to a few kilometers away!

Because of their long probosces, hawkmoths have trouble accessing nectar in flat, open flowers (for example a purple cone flower or similar). They generally to visit flowers with a long, tube-like shape.

Hawkmoths are attracted to flowers that produce large amounts of nectar. As I mentioned in a previous post, hawkmoths are capable of hovering flight, which requires a lot of energy. That energy is provided by the sugars in flower nectar.

Now, from the moth’s perspective, it’s getting a reward in the form of nectar from a flower. But what is the flower gaining by employing a moth as a pollinator rather than using a bee, a hummingbird, a beetle, etc? As I mentioned earlier, hawkmoths can be long distance fliers, often traveling several kilometers in one night in search of nectar. This means that pollen is carried further away from the plant in which it originated, potentially leading to increased genetic diversity for the plants. Additionally, since moths don’t eat or groom away any of the pollen that collects on their bodies when they visit a flower, any pollen on them has the potential to be deposited on the next flower, rather than being lost.

Another reason why plants might employ a nocturnal moth pollinator is because there are fewer flowers and fewer pollinators available at night, since the majority of flowers are open and pollinators are pollinating in the day time. This means that flowers can potentially reduce the chances of receiving pollen from the wrong species of plant (which won’t lead to the production of seeds).

Moths don’t pollinate any of our food crops, however, they do pollinate many native and garden plants. Take a look in your garden or a nearby garden to see if you can spot any potentially moth-pollinated plants!

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There are about 1400 species of Sphingidae, which can be found all over the world. Hawkmoth is one common name for moths in the family Sphingidae. The other common names for sphingids are Sphinx moths and hornworms.

First we’ll find out how they got their common names.

“Sphinx moth” likely comes from the way the caterpillars tend to sit when at rest:

The name “hawkmoth” is generally thought to have been given to the Sphingidae due to their extremely fast flight speeds. They have narrow wings and streamlined bodies to aid in this fast flight. There is some debate over exactly what speed hawkmoths top out at, but it may be as fast as 35-40 mph! Sphingidae can also hover, and are capable of fast turns and mid-air acrobatics (thought to be predator-evasion tactics).

Finally, it’s easy to see how Sphingidae earned the nickname “hornworm”. In many species the caterpillars possess a spike on the posterior end of the abdomen. It isn’t clear what the function of the horn is but it may serve as a predator deterrent. One thing is for sure, though is that that the horn is NOT a stinger.

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Kurz was not planning on doing any mothing that evening, but decided to do so at the urging of his 12-year-old granddaughter, Viktoria Puchmayr. We’re glad they did it!

Check out the story here.