northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here's an American Snout I met a few years back. A few days ago I talked about a lepidopteran with a similar name ( Baltimore Snout ) so I figured the American Snout for Throwback Thursday. Unlike the Baltimore Snout, the American Snout is a butterfly . Thus every single butterfly species is more closely related to the American Snout than the Baltimore Snout is. Still, butterflies and moths (aka lepidopterans) are pretty similar (and related) types of insects, and both these lepidopterans can have labial palps that look to us like a big, long nose. Whether the American Snout is also a moth is kind of a philosophical taxonomic question. Some people knowledgeable about insects consider butterflies to be a type of moth, very similar to the way mathematicians consider a square to be a type of rectangle. These people presumably consider the terms "moth" and "lepidopteran" to be synonymous. Others basically look at butterflies and moths as separate groups, where bu...

About once a year Duke Farms will have a summer mothing program where a naturalist sets up a sheet and bright lighting to attract moths while talking to us about them. Today I got a confirmation ID on one of the moths, a Baltimore Snout . Though I'm pretty confident of this ID, I have to admit that they do look pretty darned similar to a relative, the Dimorphic Snout  [1] [2]. The main differences are related to the large dark patches on their forewings: The patches are straighter in the Baltimore Snout. The patches extend closer to the end of the wings on the Baltimore Snout. There's sometimes a small point (described as a "tooth") at the end of the patch of a Dimorphic Snout. August 13, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 228563476, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) Note their "snout" is more accurately called a labial palp . They may help lepidopterans taste food before drinking it. [1] Technically only the female Dimorphic Snouts look like male/femal...