northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here are a couple of butterflies without fancy patterns or flashy colors that occasionally are mistaken for moths . They are a Clouded Sulphur and a Cabbage White , which are in the white and sulphur genera respectively, and both of which are in the same family of butterflies .  As smallish and somewhat plain-looking butterflies, you might not be surprised to learn they're somewhat related. The female Clouded/Orange Sulphurs can look virtually white, making the family resemblance even stronger. While I'm treating butterflies and moths as different groups under the lepidopterans , they're not exactly radically different groups. It's certain that butterflies evolved from moths ( when and why discussed here ), and so there's some reason to consider butterflies to be a subset of moths. This isn't too different from the people who consider birds/dinosaurs to be types of reptiles [1]. June 15, 2023 at Sourland Mountain Preserve Photo 300993980, (c) jpviolette, so...

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...

I was thinking recently about all the organisms that benefit from milkweed plants. (Some but not all of these also apply to dogbanes.) Just like trees support insects, birds, squirrels, and lichen as either homes or food, on a smaller scale milkweeds provide similar benefits: Perhaps their most famous connection is to Monarch butterflies, whose caterpillars feed exclusively on milkweeds (mostly leaves). They're not the only lepidopterans whose caterpillars rely on milkweeds; the Milkweed Tussock Moths also eat milkweed (and dogbane). It's not unusual to find aphids on milkweed plants. Some aphids like the Oleander Aphid are invasive, but they are insects that frequently feed on milkweed plants. And if aphids are eating milkweed, this is also likely to attract lady beetles that want to eat the aphids. Finally, the aphid poop is a sweet substance called honeydew that frequently causes Sooty Mold to grow. (I don't recall seeing aphids on dogbane, but they're documented...

Here's a silk nest of the Eastern Tent Caterpillar . What it is not is a group of Gypsy Moth caterpillars [1]. Both of these species grow up to be moths, and both have the potential to defoliate our trees by eating leaves, but that's about where the similarities end: They're not closely related. Eastern Tent Caterpillars are a native species that our local ecosystems have been dealing with since pre-colonial days. Gypsy Moths are an invasive species brought here in a misguided attempt to create a silk industry here. Eastern Tent Caterpillars can defoliate trees, though this typically occurs early in the growing season and our trees typically refoliate in a couple weeks. Gypsy Moth caterpillars are more likely to defoliate trees, and the trees are less likely to regrow leaves that season. Eastern Tent Caterpillars create the silk "tents" (hence the name) to provide themselves some (imperfect) protection from predators and the elements. They are fairly social as la...

Here's a Cabbage White Butterfly I met. I'm not exactly sure what they're eating this time of the year (I doubt if farmers have their cabbage crop coming up yet), but they do eat a lot of plants in the cabbage/mustard family of plants. Right now they're dominating the butterfly scene around me. I've seen dozens of them, and maybe 3-4 of everything else. Despite having a fairly plain look, these are considered butterflies as opposed to moths. Still, these two insects are obviously related, and some people that appear knowledgeable consider all butterflies to be moths rather than a distinct group of insects. (Admittedly butterflies and moths have a common ancestor.) April 3, 2021 at Duke Farms Photo 120284772, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

Here's another Elegant Grass-Veneer , the white/brown moth that (with a little imagination) has a frowny face when viewing the top of the moth. (I showed this species on my old Tumblr blog that I stopped using when they removed my other blog.) I think you can see the frowny face a little better in this picture.