{"id":24431,"date":"2024-12-18T20:00:17","date_gmt":"2024-12-19T04:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/?p=24431"},"modified":"2024-12-18T20:00:17","modified_gmt":"2024-12-19T04:00:17","slug":"2024-december-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/?p=24431","title":{"rendered":"2024 December 18"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>2024 December 18<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jeremy Tatum writes:\u00a0 I visited Goldstream Park today, to see if I could find some female winter moths and if I could tell the difference between the flightless females of <em>Operophtera brumata<\/em> and <em>O. occidentalis.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>There were lots of adult males of both species.\u00a0 Females were more difficult to find \u2013 they do not fly to lights, of course.<\/p>\n<p>I found the insect below, and I could see immediately that it was different from female <em>O.<\/em> <em>brumata<\/em>, so I was quite excited, thinking that it must be <em>O. occidentalis.<\/em>\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t until I got home and saw it on the computer screen that I saw that it wasn\u2019t a moth at all \u2013 it was a small beetle.\u00a0 Scott Gilmore kindly identified it as <em>Plectrura spinicauda.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>\u00a0<\/em><em><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-24425 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/IMG_4996-300x229.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"612\" height=\"467\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/IMG_4996-300x229.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/IMG_4996-1024x780.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/IMG_4996-768x585.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/IMG_4996.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 612px) 100vw, 612px\" \/>Plectrura spinicauda\u00a0 <\/em>(Col.: Cerambycidae)\u00a0\u00a0 Jeremy Tatum<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>\u00a0 <\/em>I did, however, manage to photograph a genuine female <em>Operophtera<\/em>, which I think is highly probably <em>O. occidentalis <\/em>(photograph below), If you compare it with a known female <em>brumata <\/em>(see Invert Alert for 2023 November 22), you\u2019ll see that the wing-stubs of this moth are much smaller than those of <em>brumata<\/em>.<br \/>\nWing-stub size may be a reliable way of distinguishing the two species \u2013 though more photographs of the female would help to substantiate this.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-24424 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/IMG_4994-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"617\" height=\"411\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/IMG_4994-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/IMG_4994-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/IMG_4994-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/IMG_4994.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 617px) 100vw, 617px\" \/>Believed to be <em>Operophtera occidentalis\u00a0 <\/em>(Lep.: Geometridae)\u00a0\u00a0 Jeremy Tatum<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2024 December 18 Jeremy Tatum writes:\u00a0 I visited Goldstream Park today, to see if I could find some female winter moths and if I could tell the difference between the flightless females of Operophtera brumata and O. occidentalis. \u00a0\u00a0 There were lots of adult males of both species.\u00a0 Females were more difficult to find \u2013 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-invertebrate-alert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24431"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24432,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24431\/revisions\/24432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}