Snouted Tiger Moths

Description:

Asota caricae & Asota heliconia are Erebid Moths from the Subfamily: Againainae (Snouted Tigers). There is a great deal of descriptive information available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asota_cari... & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asota_heli.... The reason both species are included here is that I consider this to be an interesting example of Species Interaction.

Habitat:

One evening, just before dark, I spotted numerous creatures crawling out of the rice husk storage building in a rice mill. When I walked over with my cell phone to take a picture, I was astonished to see that they were newly eclosed moths and clearly belonged to two different spp. They crawled up walls, over the rice mill forecourt and onto various plants until they each found a suitable spot to settle down and inflate their wings. This mass emergence of moths was repeated for the next four evenings at the same time. I have no idea of the total number, but a conservative estimate would exceed 80 moths (over the four evenings), A. caricae and A. heliconia in approximately equal numbers

Notes:

I had never witnessed anything like this before and it posed a problem. Why would an inhospitable place like a rice husk store attract moth larvae to pupate there? and more importantly how did the larvae get there. The rice mill grounds are spacious and there are many plants and trees in the grounds, but as far as I could see, there was nothing that could even remotely be considered a host plant for Asota larvae. I was unable to come up with any sensible ideas. It seemed quite improbable that larvae could march a long distance from their host plant to pupate somewhere else. Even if that crazy idea were possible, why would they do it? I eventually felt rather defeated and deflated by my inability to solve this puzzle. From time to time I looked at my pictures and pondered the possibilities, all to no effect. Several months later, the solution was presented to me by mother nature and made me feel incredibly stupid. What I had forgotten was that 3 or 4 months before I spotted these moths, my wife had instructed her helpers to renew a cyclone fence which ran from the front of the rice mill yard up to the storage building to which it was attached. The men did a super job and everything was just fine. I had forgotten that part of the workers' instructions was to cut down an old tree which had grown up the side of the building until some of its branches crept in under the eaves. The men cut all the branches and instead of felling the tree, as instructed, they left a four feet high stump and nailed the fence to it. When the rainy season arrived, I noticed the fence post was growing branches. It was a Ficus sp. (a perfectly good host for Asota spp. I had forgotten it was there. The solution to my problem was then revealed, the men had been unable to remove branches which had grown into the eaves and in fear of damage to the roof, decided to leave them there, hidden from sight up under the roof. Obviously these branches had numerous larvae which pupated inside the building. Problem solved. I feel that this is probably a good example of species interaction in that I have never previously seen large numbers of larvae of different species congregating in such a small space (by that I mean on one or two small branches of a single tree).