A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Project Noah Nature School
Alsophila pometaria
The females are wingless, and resemble spiders or aphids. I was so happy to have found one this late in the year, during the Holidays!
Spotted on Dec 25, 2012
Submitted on Dec 28, 2012
8 Comments
On #NationalMothWeek, each day we'll be bringing you an educational fact about moths, courtesy of National Moth Week team member and Project Noah ranger Jacob Gorneau.
Moths are well-known for their beautiful wings adorned with scales arranged in a variety of patterns, shapes, and colors. Despite this, there are some cases, especially in moths of the family Geometridae, in which the female moths no longer have wings, but the males do. As a result the males must seek out these wingless females to mate.
National Moth Week is from July 21-29. Are you participating? You can still register a public or private event here: https://buff.ly/2LCh5ge, especially if your country or region isn't on the map yet!
On Project Noah you can submit photos of moths you spot here: https://buff.ly/2LBq7tK
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/projectnoah/pho...
Thank you so much, Karen, and Fyn for featuring it in the blog!
Congrats Jacob, your moth is featured in the Project Noah blog! http://blog.projectnoah.org/post/5623943...
Thank you so much Diane! It was a wonderful Christmas gift from Mother Nature! :)
Thank you Sergio! I find the wingless females to be quite interesting, but I guess they only live to breed! ;)
Great series, J. Very nice indeed!
Amazing that you found one at all, but Dec. 25 ! Wow. Amazing.
It is crazy! I can't believe living only to mate, but apparently many insects do so. Silk moths don't have mouths for eating and starve to death. A number of related species of moths have females which don't have wings, or they don't have functional wings. It's really interesting.
Crazy that they are wingless!