Australian Moths at Bunyipco Blog
Check out this blog post featuring NMW and moths from the rainforests of Kuranda, Queensland, Australia!
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Citizen Science, Project Noah and NMW
Guest Blogger: Karen Loughrey Richard, Community Director, Project Noah Project Noah is a community of over 200,000 nature-lovers worldwide. Launched in early 2010, it all started off as an experiment to see if we could build a fun, location-based mobile application to encourage people to reconnect with nature and document local wildlife. We wanted to …
Interesting Blog – Colorado Firemoths
Here’s a cool blog post about Schinia masoni, the Colorado firemoth. The post describes the ecology of the firemoth and it’s relationship with blanketflower, Gaillardia aristata. Blanketflower serves at the moths’ larval host plant and as a nectar resource for adult firemoths. Blanketflower is a fire dependent species. The seeds of the plant wait in the soil until a …
Hawkmoths Deter Bats with Sonic Blasts
Entomologists have known for awhile that tiger moths emit sonic clicks to interfere with bats’ sonar and avoid predation. Hawkmoths can do it too, it turns out! Jesse Barber, a behavioral ecologist with Boise State University and phylogeneticist Akito Kawahara of the University of Florida in Gainesville recently experimented with hawkmoths in Borneo. They captured …
Is it a Moth or a Butterfly?
As moth’ers, one of the questions we get asked most frequently (if not THE most frequently asked question) is, of course, What is the difference between a butterfly and a moth? We’ve all got our stock answer to rattle off: butterflies have club-tipped antennae, most moths are nocturnal while most butterflies are diurnal (though there …
Moths and Light Pollution
As moth’ers, we know better than anybody that moths are attracted to lights. However, when this occurs unintentionally across large scales – such as in highly light-polluted cities, the effects can be detrimental to moth populations. Scientists at the university of Exeter in the UK have quantified declines in moth populations across the country. As …
Ridiculously Cute Moths
Moths are often considered butterflies’ ugly cousins and few insects are generally portrayed as “cute”. That’s why it’s refreshing to see lists like this one from the website TheFW (despite the somewhat questionable grammar) featuring 17 “ridiculously cute” moths. The usual suspects populate the list – Io, Polyphemus, Rosy Maple – but it also includes …
Moths that Drive Cars
Moths can seriously do everything these days – not only can they hear extremely high frequency sounds, now they can drive! Researchers at the University of Tokyo did an experiment to test the sensory and motor systems of silkmoths. They had the moths control small motorized vehicles to move in the direction of pheromones (chemicals …
Greater Wax Moth Can Hear Highest Sound Frequency
This article ran last week on LiveScience – The Greater Wax moth, a common Pyralid found in North America, Europe and Asia, can hear sounds up to 300 kilohertz – the highest known sound frequency. This is about 100 khz higher than bats can hear and our human ears can hear sounds up to only 20 …
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Don’t Eat Me
Moths and other lepidoptera sometimes go to extreme measures to avoid being detected by predators and parasites. This New York Times article details a few predator avoidance strategies that moths employ to avoid being caught, eaten, seen, or parasitized. Some moths use mimicry to trick predators into thinking they are poor food resources such as dead …