A sky diving caterpillar

Being irritated from entangling in the silk threads of caterpillars sky diving from our urban yellow flame trees, Peltophorum pterocarpum. I collected one caterpillar to rear and see what moth species it is.

Here is the caterpillar ‘sky diver’. Caterpillars lay safety threads when they are crawling so that in case they fall off, they can still climb back up to their original position using their thread.

A close up shot of it.

After a week, the caterpillar pupated and morphed into a nice moth. If I’m not wrong, this should be Chiasmia emersaria, from the family Geometridae.

Alas, after taking some pictures of it in my room, it flew off and I can’t locate it to release outside…

Pink month

Saw this beautiful pink moth (Chrysocraspeda olearia, Geometridae) flying around the kitchen in my house when I was having my breakfast this morning. Isn’t it cute?

It has flown off since and is hiding somewhere in my room. Hmmm…

Hypopyra sp.

Another short issue of the moths which I took last time…

This picture was taken about 4 or 5 years back when I was still schooling. I usually hide at my community centre’s study room to revise for my tests or exams at that time and will just explore around the vicinity when my boredom has reached its peak.

Hypopyra sp.
Family: Noctuidae
Subfamily: Catocalinae

Roger said that this moth will be Hypopyra vespertilio if the hind wings are red but H. ossigera if yellow.

Pink Moth

Dan found and took this picture of the beautiful moth in orange with pink lines across its wings. Damn nice right?

Eumelea sp.
Geometridae, Desmobathrinae.
Location: Bukit Timah Hill, Jungle Fall.

Three Moths

Running out of creative juices now so pardon me for the title. Anyway, during a recent frogging trip with D at BTNR, we found a few beautiful moths as shown below.

A commonly sighted species of Owl Moth, Erebus ephesperis
Family: Noctuidae
Subfamily: Catocalinae

A beautiful moth with a army-camouflage wing, Eudocima smaragdipicta
Family: Noctuidae
Subfamily: Catocalinae

Lastly, an unknown Hawk Moth suspected to be Cechenena sp.
Family: Sphingidae

Thanks to Roger for the latter two IDs and D for the taking the last pict.

Danger lurks beneath

Have warning or aposematic colouration is a good way to advertise to predators that they are not very good to eat. However, the predator themselves might not be "trained" to recognise such a threat until it took one sample and suffer from the consequences.

For the Underwing moths, they have such a nice compensation by having dull forewings for camoflague. Underneath, it conceals its prominent hindwings which normally consist of some fancy flashy colours. Some say it will startle their predators, to warn that they are unpalatable or even for courtship purposes.




Pericallia ricini
Noctuidae, Arctiinae, Arctiini
Location: D's Condo

Some of them, like the one above can even squirt defensive odours as a deterent as me and D managed to find out first handed. Fortunately, we weren't hit by those chemicals.

X-branded Moth

An addition to the X-men family~


Chalciope mygdon
Noctuidae, Catocalinae
Location: Shrub opp. Singapore Polytechnic

Mating, Dating and Dead Moths

This is a much delayed posting because I had problems getting the ID. I'm back at the forest opposite Ngee Ann Poly again (last week) but this time at night, invited by Daniel as he wants to go frogging. It turned out to be much better than a day trip with lots of little creatures the most common being dragonflies and moths. But definitely not for those who detest flying insects since they flew pretty haphazardly, some onto our faces and even nostrils!

Its night-time with noone around. The perfect place to date.


Creatonotos gangis
Noctuidae, Arctiinae, Arctiini

I was ecstatic to finally see a moth extending its scent organs. These organs can be eversible like in this case and serves to emit pheromones. The moth on top should be a male since it is typical for the male to extend and release its love mist in close proximity to the female while the latter secrete them in long range.

However, it is strange as some journals describe this species having coremata (name for this type of organ) longer than its body size. But it might be because the male is in the process of deflating the organ.


After a while, the coremata was completely retracted and they might be getting ready to mate. But we did not stay behind to watch it. Anyway, it is easy to see why they are called Tiger Moths from their marked abdomens.


Creatonotos transiens
Noctuidae, Arctiinae, Arctiini

Seems like love is in the air and we managed to find a few other pairs in the process of mating. Here was another closely related Tiger Moth. Even though they were in the spotlight from my flashing camera, their wings managed to cover up any embarrassing shots.


Unfortunately, danger was lurking in the dark maze of grassland. Daniel actually spotted a Lynx Spider (Oxyopes sp.) which had captured the same species of moth. Just like the jumping spiders, these lynx spiders are active hunters that do not ambush using a web.


But of course, many species do that and this unknown diamond backside spider caught one in its web. A poor dragonfly also accidentally got trapped onto it soon after.

For those who are curious since this should be a frogging trip, we did see some frogs but I may not put them up unless I can find all their IDs. :)

Thanks to Ryan for his IDs.

Mottephobia

Moths are pretty, sleek and cool. This is just my personal opinion. In fact, I know quite a few who are terrified of them. It is hard to imagine why people feel this way. Adult moths are practically harmless, with the exception of some who might be allegric to their scales which cover the body and wings. Their mouth parts are just coiled up proboscises for sucking or primitive tiny jaws or none at all.

But well, the definition of phobia means irrational fear. Just like how I am terrified of cockroaches. And there is actually a term for the fear of moths, Mottephobia!


Location: NUS
Ambulyx moorei
Sphingidae, Smerinthinae

On the hand of my lovely mentor in marine bio lab, Angie.

My first hawk month

Seems like whatever blog that I started had grown stagnant and died somehow. Except for this one even though I still do neglect it now and then. Thus, I decided to transfer some of my posts over to here about some of the moths that my friends and I took. Many of the IDs were not possible without the help of Dr Roger Kendrick, Ryan Brooks and many others, besides the few moth ID books in my possession.


Location: NUS
Pergesa acteus
Sphingidae, Macroglossinae


I still recalled about 8 months back how ecstatic I was when I saw it clinging right at the entrance of Raffles Museum. It was my first sighting of a live hawkmoth! Ah well, many others might just shrug this off but it really made my day seeing this awesome raptor-like moth. Somehow, this reminds me to be careful not to do this to others next time as such a dull acknowledgement might just dampen what can be their future passion.

More information here.

Taken with the help of Tinghui's DSLR

The Pagoda Bagworm

This is the 4th time I am mentioning this bagworm. Previous ones #1, #2, #3 were very brief and uninformative so this time, I thought I will go more in depth into it.

Previously someone had commented on my blog that this unidentified creature was a bagworm moth. Further confirmed it after seeing the specimen at the Singapore Garden Festival. But I just felt incomplete not knowing its species or at least genus. However, sourcing from the web "bagworm" yield nothing close to this bagworm case. Dingli suggested I email to some moth specialist or entomologist. He sourced for me the email of Mr Henry Barlow who authored "An introduction to the moths of South East Asia". Recieved a prompt reply by him the next day, saying that this might be Pagodiella hekmeyeri, or the common name Pagoda Bagworm.

Pagoda bagworm close up

A study by Florida International University (look at paper of Foreign exploration for biological control agents of three invasive species from Asia) on the biological controls of invasive plants in Malaysia found significant herbivory of the pagoda bagworm on Ardisia elliptica, which is the same host where I first saw the bagworm. They also have similar cases and also circular wounds thus showing that Mr Barlow was probably right with his conclusion. It was noted that it is a general pest found on other plants like the oil palm. I had also seen them on sea almonds a few times.

bagworm wounds on the sea almond

Bagworm moths are of the Order Lepidoptera, same as the butterflies and family Psychidae. The distinctive feature of bagworms is that their larvae are remarkable architects, building mobile cases made of environmental materials, in this example, the leaves, to hide themselves in. Thus, within each case hides a tiny caterpillar. For the pagoda bagworm, it scrapes the chlorophyll off the leaf before incising cleanly around the area consumed, creating a circular wound. The excised leaf piece is then added to the bagworm’s protective casing.

Circular holes on Ardisia elliptica

Each species of bagworm construct a unique case hence making it useful for identification. Their cases are binded together with silk and also to its plant host which is very steadfast as I had tried prying them off the leaf with much effort. Another interesting fact is that the adult female of the bagworm develop vestigial wings thus cannot fly. They normally stayed within case while the adult males moths can attain the power of flight.

Theres this amazing macro shots of another species of bagworm building its case using twigs, which I found linked from the Nature Spies blog. Really worth to take a look.