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Monopis longella
Small moth with striking black/dark brown and yellow coloration. Darker gray marking within white on the sides of the wings. Bird poop mimic. Originally found in China, Japan, Russia and Korea. Introduced to North America, possibly in the 1980's. Has been recorded mostly in the Eastern United States.
Suburban yard.
Also called Yellow-headed Monopis Moth.
Hi Lois, yes, I do use bugguide a lot (to the point I really should start submitting my pictures to them). I do use MPG as well. They are a great resource but their search engine can be a bit difficult to navigate. I am getting better at it and I appreciate being able to compare similar looking moths but if I don't even have an idea for what family to look in I have a hard time with the volume of images to sort through.
J, no wonder we couldn't find it! Thanks for the ID on this one. I agree with what you said about the markings as well.
I see you are using bugguide which is great! Another good resource for moth identification is:
http://mothphotographersgroup.msstate.ed...
We were looking in the wrong family! It is Tineidae.
Monopis pavlovski is also known as the Yellow-Headed Monopis. That being said, there is also a White-Headed Monopis (Monopis monachella). It looks to me like both species have white heads, which mades them superficially appear the same. I don't think the color of the head is a reliable distinction, but I think the mark under the huge black part is only seen in Monopis pavlovski. In addition, I have found another difference: M. pavlovski has an all-black back with no markings inside of it. M. monachella has a white dot in the lower portion of its wing.
Ventral of M. pavlovski:
http://bugguide.net/node/view/703585
Ventral of M. monachella
http://bugguide.net/node/view/689132/bgp...
Dorsal of M. pavlovski:
http://bugguide.net/node/view/403785/bgi...
Dorsal of M. monachella
http://bugguide.net/node/view/689130/bgp...
Cheers!
I can't seem to find a match there. It resembles some of the Tarache genus but no matches there either. :(
Spotted on Oct 1, 2012
Submitted on Oct 9, 2012
+1
