2020 September 12

 

   Jeremy Tatum writes:   I was just about to post my photograph below of a Nepytia phantasmaria, which was on the glass door of the Swan Lake Nature House this afternoon, when I received this message from Robb Bennett: “I’m on Hornby Island. There are a great many of these flying around.  Can you enlighten?”

 

  I didn’t even look at Robb’s photograph before replying that they were Nepytia phastasmaria.  Luck was with me, for, when I looked at his photograph I saw that I was right!  Robb continues: “They were ‘all over the place’ on Hornby Island this week. I arrived there on Wednesday afternoon and there were quite a few flying around then, and lots came to lights that evening. After that, they didn’t seem to come to lights after dark any more but still lots ‘all over the place’ during the day.”

 

  This is quite a phenomenal year for the species.  Until I saw one in a UVic car park a few days ago, I’d never seen one, writes Jeremy.

 

Nepytia phantasmaria (Lep.: Geometridae)  Jeremy Tatum

 

Nepytia phantasmaria (Lep.: Geometridae)  Robb Bennett

 

   Jeremy continues:   Here’s the caterpillar of a Peppered Moth Biston betularia first shown when young on August 30, now full grown:

 

Biston betularia (Lep.: Geometridae)  Jeremy Tatum

 

     Jeremy Tatum writes:  Aziza Cooper sends a photograph of an “insect” from Uplands Park.  Users of this site have, I think, become terrified of using the word “bug” when writing to this site.  Fear not, Aziza, you could safely have used the word with this insect, for it is indeed a bug.  It is a nymph of a bug, almost certainly of the Family Pentatomidae, but beyond that, I cannot go.  If any viewer can help, please let us know.

 

Nymph of bug (Hem.: Pentatomidae)  Aziza Cooper

 

   Jochen Möhr’s moths from Metchosin this morning:

 

2 Agriphila sp.

1 Eupithecia graefii

1 Drepanulatrix sp.

1 Fishia illocata

1 Lithomoia germana

3 Pleromelloida cinerea

2 Tetracis probably pallulata

1 Zenophleps lignicolorata

 

   The first of Jochen’s photographs below is of an amazing moth.  Believe it or not (and I had some difficulty believing it when Libby told me last year) it is a noctuid, not at all related to the Unicorn Prominent and its relatives in the Family Notodontidae.  Is this Müllerian or Batesian mimicry? Or neither?  Just convergent evolution and not mimicry at all?  Who knows?

 

Lithomoia germana (Lep.: Noctuidae)  Jochen Möhr

 

Zenophleps lignicolorata (Lep.: Geometridae)   Jochen Möhr

 

Eupithecia graefii (Lep.: Geometridae)   Jochen Möhr