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Spindle Ermine larvae

Yponomeuta cagnagella

Description:

Trees draped with caterpillar silk sheets produced by many thousands of small (approx. 2 cm) caterpillars. The trees (willows?) were almost stripped of leaves.

Habitat:

1 Species ID Suggestions



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8 Comments

staccyh
staccyh 10 years ago

Wow, thats really amazing. Never seen anything like this ever before. Thanks for sharing!

The MnMs
The MnMs 10 years ago

I was intrigued and found the article about spindle ermine moths larvae doing this..I cannot tell is my favorite ...I would not like my car wrapped on caterpillars containing silk...but it is a very interesting spotting nonetheless..thanks for sharing!

Tiz
Tiz 10 years ago

There are some other moths that has a similar behaviour but in other types of trees. I wish I was better at identifying trees :) It is somehow the key to identify our spottings...

TraceyRunciman
TraceyRunciman 10 years ago

Thanks for the responses - this is a great project! If the tree really was a willow, then (I have just been googling!) this would be Yponomeuta rorrella, unless the members of the Yponomeuta family aren't too fussy about which trees they feast upon.

Ava T-B
Ava T-B 10 years ago

Please consider adding this spotting to the Animal Architecture mission at http://www.projectnoah.org/missions/8082...

Tiz
Tiz 10 years ago

Hello Tracey and welcome to Project Noah. I found a similar tree in Sweden in the beginning of the summer. http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/313...

I still have it as un-identified, but my un-confirmed guess is that it is a moth web from Moth Bird-cherry Ermine (Yponomeuta evonymella)...

Best regards Tina

This is interesting!

DanielePralong
DanielePralong 10 years ago

Very interesting Tracey! Welcome to Project Noah.

TraceyRunciman
Spotted by
TraceyRunciman

Hamburg, Germany

Spotted on Jun 12, 2013
Submitted on Dec 3, 2013

Related Spottings

Vogelkersstippelmot (Yponomeuta evonymella) European Small Ermine Moth ermine Apple Small Ermine Moth

Nearby Spottings

Beech gall Peacock butterfly Conifer Tuft Hawfinch

Reference

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