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Project Noah Nature School
Hyalophora columbia
Equals promethea in size.
NE Vermont, Lunenberg. Elevation 1500 ft. Tug Mountain. Lots of larch.
I had one person identify this as a cecropia. I don't buy that.
Congrats Larry, your spotting was featured in our Facebook quiz! https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=...
Very nice pic!...and likely a better find than you realize!!!
Having worked with these moths for many years, members of the Hyalophora are still among my favorites.
I strongly suspect your moth is an F1 cross! Crosses between columbia and cecropia are well documented and can be common in the Northeast. ....this is definitely NOT a pure cecropia by a long shot, but doesn't look like a pure nominate columbia from New England either.
The moth in your pic is very suggestive of an intermediate - brighter red than seen in nominate columbia and certainly not colored like pure cecropia. Even the cocoon bears some similarity to those with cecropia introgression (not so compact and as heavily striated as pure columbia). Regarding the moth, notice the well developed bright red postmedial scaling/color (i.e. the red band on the outer edge of the white band - This trait alone is atypical of columbia but is diagnostic for cecropia). The characters mentioned are not typical of pure columbia at all ...much less in New England where columbia is typically very dark choc. brown with a deep wine color/wash. The specimen pictured - being female - is typical in color of crosses which are usually much brighter red than are the hybrid males.
Please compare the following:
Typical columbia from New England: http://bugguide.net/node/view/56371
H columbia columbia: http://bugguide.net/node/view/523609/......
H cecropia x columbia: http://bugguide.net/node/view/370284
If you come across additional Hyalophora specimens (columbia, cecropia or crosses), please take pic's. If you haven't an aversion to collecting a few, examples for reference and genetics would be very useful.
Cheers,
Bill Reynolds
Curator, Coordinator, & Containment Director of the Arthropod Zoo
NC Museum of Natural Sciences
11 West Jones Street
Raleigh, NC 27601-1029
OFFICE: (919) 707-9921
FAX: (919) 715-6439
bill.reynolds@naturalsciences.org
Missions are really easy, Larry. Just click on the link that he provided and it will take you to his mission's page. Click the Join tab there and you're in. Then, you can go back to this spotting, click the "Edit this spotting" link at the top-right, and look for the Mission tab on the right once you're in edit mode. When you click that tab, there will be a drop-down that shows all the missions you've joined. You can then select that mission and save the edits. You can join as many missions as you wish, but please only choose missions that are appropriate for a particular spotting. Have fun!
Beautiful! Could you add this to my mission, Moths of the World? http://www.projectnoah.org/missions/8841...
Thanks!
Spotted on Nov 21, 2011
Submitted on Jul 8, 2012
