Diario de gcwarbler

On the Moths of the Greater Austin project journal, I just uploaded a detailed account of our (@jcochran706 and me) recent recognition of a Texas endemic Phycitine moth, the "Cute Plateau Pyralid", which flies for only a brief time in the Spring. That post has some identification notes and will soon have some supporting images. In the meantime, here are links to the iNat species pages for the Cute Plateau Pyralid, it's MPG page, and it's most similar relative, the Dusky Raisin Moth, and it's MPG page.

This ought to be spectacular! The National Butterfly Center has announced an exciting new event, Mega Moth, scheduled for Labor Day Weekend, Friday-Monday, September 1-4, 2023. The event will be based out of, and focused, of course, on the National Butterfly Center near Mission, Texas, with host accomodations at La Quinta Inn & Suites in McAllen. Registration is now open. Complete details about the event can be found here:

Mega Moth Mission

There will be many mothing stations set up at NBC on Friday through Sunday nights, as well as workshops and guided walks during the day. Lecturers will include Jack Cochran (@jcochran706) and Kate Fatras (@k8thegr8), with a keynote talk on Saturday night by yours truly.

With this journal entry, I’m announcing the topic of my Saturday evening talk, which will be: “A ‘Birder Gone Bad’: Expanding My Horizons into Mothing.” I will explore my own journey into moths, along with the commonalities of this path traveled by—or available for travel to—anyone with a keen interest in Nature.

I hope all of you will consider being a part of this inaugural event and join us at the National Butterfly Center in September!

See also, Jack Cochran's (@jcochran706) announcement of the event here.

March is a wonderfully busy month for all of us iNaturalists. I’m a little late getting this posted but I wanted to announce a couple of opportunities for Austin area iNatters.

1. I will be hosting a visit in Austin for our pal and premier iNaturalist James Bailey of California (@silversea_starsong), March 7-13. James will be staying at our house on Salton Drive and I’m going to be figuring out a schedule of daily target activities to maximize James’ time in Central Texas. We have no fixed schedule yet but we’ll probably be making local field trips within 1-2 hours of Austin on most days, March 8-12. We might even organize a pot luck dinner in James’ honor on the evening of Friday or Saturday (March 10 or 11). All of this is to be determined. But PLEASE leave a note on this journal post, message me directly, or send me an email at [gcwarbler AT austin.rr.com] if you’d like me to keep you advised of the anticipated schedule. We’d love to coordinate with and link up with as many other Austin-area iNatters as we can.

2. Mike Murphy (@mikmurphy), owner and proprietor of Los Madrones Ranch near Dripping Springs, TX, has invited local iNaturalists in the Austin region to visit the ranch for a memorial mini-bioblitz on Saturday, March 25, in honor and memory of our friend Greg Lasley who spent a lot of time on Los Madrones.
   http://www.losmadrones.com/LM/Home.html
   Mike announced the event in a comment on the RIP Greg Lasley blog here:
   https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/46021-rest-in-peace-greg
   There will be a midday BBQ and we will be setting up a few mothing stations at Los Madrones on Friday night. Visitors will have the opportunity for overnight camping (primitive) but facilities are limited. Please contact Mike Murphy directly on iNaturalist or via his email address (see the above blog). Here’s a link to an iNat map of observations in/around Los Madrones Ranch off of Hamilton Pool Road in western Travis County:
   https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?nelat=30.316904240666155&nelng=-98.05598944758576&place_id=any&subview=map&swlat=30.2840014028492&swlng=-98.07804793452424

Please leave a comment here or message me directly and let me know of your interest in either/both events.

My recent research into “The Complex History of Two Lichen Moth Genera”, Cisthene and Illice (including a discussion of Eudesmia and several other lichen moths), has now been published in the December 2022 issue of Southern Lepidopterists’ News (Vol. 44, No. 4, pp. 461-468). A pdf copy of the paper is available to download on ResearchGate.net at this link.

If you have trouble downloading that paper or don't have access to ResearchGate, please message me privately and I can send it as an attachment to an email. I'm going to tag a number of iNatters who contributed images and otherwise helped with this research.

Resumen (español): Eudesmia quadrifasciata es muy similar a E. arida. Su principal carácter distintivo, la mayor parte de las alas traseras negras, no es evidente en las fotos de campo. Las diferencias sutiles en la forma de la mancha subterminal en las alas anteriores pueden ayudar a distinguir la especie; esta mancha es más corta y más en forma de lágrima en quadrifasciata que en arida. Los rangos de las dos especies están muy separados. E. quadrifasciata se encuentra desde el estado de México al sur hasta Oaxaca.

Eudesmia quadrifasciata: Acatlán, Puebla @hildeberto | Zapotitlán, Puebla @bsullend

Eudesmia quadrifasciata: Ixtapan de la Sal, México @mizrain | Zapotitlán, Puebla @monitorzapotitlansalinas

The lichen moth Eudesmia quadrifasciata (Erebidae: Arctiinae) is very similar to E. arida of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. Walker (1865) described "Gerba quadrifasciata" from Oaxaca, Mexico, from a single male specimen. It's primary distinguishing character is the mostly black hindwing with just a small basal spot of orange, a character that will be unrecognizable in most field photos. Other than this aspect, Walker's brief original description does not allow for handy discrimination from most other Eudesmia which occur in Mexico. Of note, however, Walker did mention that the subterminal crescent "narrows towards the interior angle, which it does not reach." Hampson's (1900) redescription of quadrifasciata and illustration of the type (below) indicate that the subterminal crescent runs from "just below the costa to just below vein 2", i.e., somewhat shorter than the more northern E. arida and unlike E. menea. The illustration of E. quadrifasciata by Hampson (1900, pl. 25, fig. 23, below, left) shows a forewing that is probably indistinguishable from that of E. arida but Draudt's illustration (1918, pl. 35, row i, below, right) emphasizes that the subterminal crescent is short and teardrop-shaped (thicker anteriorly, narrowed posteriorly). As with populations of other species/phenotypes, the hue of the color bands and their widths vary quite a bit within the small available set of images. None of the available images on iNaturalist shows a view of the hindwing or abdomen.

Among iNaturalist observations as of 20 December 2022, I identified 9 observations in the Mexican states of Oaxaca, Puebla, Morelos, and Mexico which have a distinct short, teardrop-shaped subterminal crescent (map, below). An additional somewhat disjunct record in the state of Jalisco appears to be of the same phenotype:

Dyar's (1917) "Cisthene" [= Eudesmia] tehuacana, described from Tehuacán in the state of Puebla, Mexico, apparently differs from E. quadrifasciata only in that the abdomen is "black above, except at base and tip". I expect this is just a regional variant of E. quadrifasciata.

References:

Draudt, M. 1918. 61. Genus: Cisthene Wkr. Pp. 273, In: A. Seitz, The Macrolepidoptera of the world: a systematic account of all the known Macrolepidoptera. Division II: The Macrolepidoptera of the American Region, Vol. 6. The American Bombyces and Sphinges. Publ. 30, XI, 1918.

Dyar, H. G. 1917. A note on Cisthene. Ins. Insc. Menstr. 5:8-10.

Hampson, G. F. 1900. Catalogue of the Lepidoptera Phalaenae in the British Museum. Vol. 2. Catalogue of the Arctiadae (Nolinae, Lithosianae) in the Collecion of the British Museum. London. 589 p.

Walker, F. 1864 [1865]. List of the Specimens of Lepidopterous Insects in the Collection of the British Museum. Part XXXI--Supplement. Printed by order of the Trustees, London.

I'm learning how to use SimpleMappr (SimpleMappr.net) to create distribution maps. Here I'm going to try to embed the first map I created. It shows the distribution of five species of Eudesmia lichen moths in southern South America. The data are mostly from a download of all iNat sightings of four of the species as of Dec. 8, 2022, with the addition of a couple of records from earlier literature. Please don't take this as a final product of anything. I'm still working on the data set. This is just an EXAMPLE of the use of SimpleMappr.

The next test is to show a downloaded version of a map which I then uploaded to Flickr and will embed here. This shows the distribution of observations of Eudesmia cypris in Mexico, from iNaturalist data as of Dec. 8, 2022. This can be compared to the (adjacent) screen capture of the iNat observation map from my previous post on this species. (There are more dots on the iNat screen capture because it includes a few sightings on which there isn't community agreement yet, e.g. the original observer or subsequent identifier has not yet concurred.)

Well, that seems to work OK. Don't worry about the size of the legends, scales, etc. These versions of the images have been reduced just to fit conveniently in the journal format.

Resumen (español): Entre las varias especies del género de líquenes Eudesmia descritas en México, E. cypris se reconoce fácilmente por su tórax negro. Por lo demás, es muy similar a E. arida. Ocurre en las tierras altas del centro de México en los estados de Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacán y el sur de Zacatecas.

Eudesmia cypris (L to R): Agauscalientes, @leptonia | Michoacán, @minerva31 | Michoacán, @elrayman210

In my continuing review of the literature on the lichen moth genus Eudesmia, I have tried to carefully read the original descriptions, compare those to the earliest published drawings of the species (often from the type specimens), and then compare these to the array of modern images available on iNaturalist and other repositories. This is very challenging for the populations of this genus in Mexico. There are no less than 11 species names that have been applied to various Eudesmia populations in Mexico. Many of these are likely to be synonyms because of the variation in color and patterns that wasn’t appreciated by researchers in the 19th Century (see my journal entry on this topic). However, a few of the named species have distinctive enough characters to be recognizable in modern images.

One such species is Eudesmia cypris (Druce, 1894) (originally described in the genus Ruscino; see below). Druce described the species from a specimen from Lake Chapala, Jalisco, Mexico. This is a blackish moth with the standard Eudesmia orange-yellow median band across the forewings, a subterminal arc of the same color, and with the basal part of the hindwings also orange-yellow. Druce described the median orange-yellow band as “wide”, but his illustration in volume 3 of the moth volumes of Godman & Salvin’s Biologia Centrali-Americana (plate 78, figure 5; see below) shows a Eudesmia with a rather narrow median band compared to the variation seen in various other populations and species. The margins of this median band are fairly straight.

The subterminal orange arc is much like that in Eudesmia arida in that it does not quite reach the costal margin of the forewing. Most importantly, however, Druce further described the species as having the “head, antennae, thorax, abdomen, and legs black; collar and tegulae orange-yellow.” The black thorax and abdomen are evident in the aforementioned image in the Biologia and these are distinct from all other populations of Eudesmia in Mexico. The next nearest species with black on the thorax are the distinctive Eudesmia unicincta and Eudesmia lunaris of Colombia and Venezuela. Populations of other named Eudesmia species all around E. cypris have an entirely orange-yellow head, thorax, and abdomen.

As I reviewed observations on iNaturalist, I encountered a distinct set of images in the highlands of central Mexico with the diagnostic black center of the thorax, surrounded by the orange collar and tegulae as described by Druce. They occur in a geographically unified region in the interior of Mexico in the states of Aguascaliente, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacán, and Zacatecas (see screen capture from iNat, below). I conclude that these all represent Eudesmia cypris. The species appears to be confined mainly to the western portion of the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt (TMVB)(see map below) and nearby highlands of the Sierra Madre Occidental to near Zacatecas (city). There are no images yet of the species on the Pacific coastal slope of west Mexico and none south of the TMVB.

Map of Eudesmia cypris observations, as of 7 December 2022. For another version of a range map of Eudesmia cypris, see my journal entry on testing SimpleMappr.

Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt (TMVB). Adapted from Pérez-Moreno et al. 2021. Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(13), 6126. Open Access, downloaded from mdpi.com.

Thus far this range seems to be allopatric with (i.e., completely separate from that of) Eudesmia arida which occurs south to northern Zacatecas in the west and across the arid Mexican plateau to Nuevo Leon, San Luis Potosi, and Hidalgo. I haven’t found any other obvious field marks for separating cypris and arida in images of living moths except for the black thorax (which is all orange in arida). It is conceivable that cypris is just a regional color morph of arida (in which case, “Eudesmia cypris (Druce, 1894)" would have name priority over “Eudesmia arida (Skinner, 1906)”), but that must await proper phylogenetic studies with genitalic examination and DNA analysis.

References

Druce, H. 1894. Descriptions of some new species of Heterocera from Central America. Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. (6)13:168-182.

Druce, H., 1881-1900. Biologia Centrali-Americana. Insecta. Lepidoptera-Heterocera, Vol. I., Vol. II (1891-1900), Vol. III (Plates; 1891-1900). Edited by F. D. Godman and O. Salvin. Links to BHL: Description of Ruscino cypris in Vol. II; link to plate 78 in Vol. III.

Skinner, H. 1906. New butterflies and moths with notes on some species. Entomol. News 17(3):95-96.

Eudesmia australis (Orfila, 1935)

Cisthene australis Orfila, 1935. Rev. Soc. Entomol. Arg. 7:225-226.
Vianania australis Orfila, 1953. Physis 20(59):483-484.
[Bendib & Minet (1999) synonymized Vianania under Eudesmia.]

Resumen (español): Eudesmia australis se puede reconocer por las pequeñas manchas anaranjadas en el collar y las manchas anaranjadas subapicales "triangulares" en las alas anteriores. La especie se encuentra desde el estado de Santa Catarina, Brasil, hasta el sur del departamento de Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Eudesmia australis: Argentina @claudianr | Argentina @luchoperalta | Uruguay @gmmv80

Like other southern South American members of the genus, Eudesmia australis has (1) two orange subterminal patches instead of one orange crescent, and (2) a median orange or yellow band which often has irregular margins, bulges in the middle, and narrows at the costa and inner forewing margins. Of the two subterminal patches, the shape of the subapical one has been described as "subtriangular" or "triangular" (Orfila 1935, 1953), refering to the fact that the patch is widest in the middle, its basal edge forms a broad obtuse angle, and the distal margin is evenly and gently curved. This is similar to the same patch on E. ruficollis of Brazil and contrasts with the rectangular or crescentic subapical patch on E. argentinensis. The thorax is mostly black with two widely separated spots of orange on the collar, unlike the nearly continuous orange collar of both E. argentinensis and E. ruficollis. There appears to be a general trend for the orange on the collar to be slightly more extensive towards the northern part of the range of this species, thus approaching the continuous orange collar shown on E. ruficollis.

On iNaturalist, Eudesmia australis has been documented from southern Brazil, through Uruguay, and into southern Buenos Aires province, Argentina, where the species apparently overlaps with Eudesmia argentinensis. The westernmost images on iNaturalist are near Tornquist, Buenos Aires Province. The northernmost images are from the state of Santa Catarina, Brazil.

DRAFT map of the distribution of five species of Eudesmia in southern South America. Data are from iNaturalist observations as of 8 December 2022 plus a few earlier records from the literature.

Orfila, R. N. 1935. Lepidoptera Neotropica, II. Dos nuevas especies de Noctuoidea. Rev. Soc. Entomol. Arg. 7:225-226.

Orfila, R. N. 1953. Notas sobre Lithosiidae, I. El género Eudesmia Hb. y un género y especie nuevos. Physis 20:474-485.

Resumen (español): Después de estudiar la literatura sobre varios géneros de polillas de líquenes, descubrí una observación de Eudesmia aymara, una especie local y aparentemente poco común del centro de Bolivia. La observación fue realizada por @eldirko en enero de 2021. [En la taxonomía de iNat, esta especie solía ser incluida en el género Vianania. Posteriormente Bendib & Monet (1999) colocaron Vianania como sinónimo de Eudesmia.]

This is kind of fun! I’ve spent many days recently delving into the literature on the lichen moths of the genus Eudesmia and related genera such as Vianania, etc. This can be pretty tedious, but I really enjoy little discoveries along the way. Well, today I made a big “discovery” in this group of moths.

Eudesmia aymara was described originally in the genus Vianania by Ricardo N. Orfila in 1953 from a few specimens collected in Bolivia. The original description (of both the new genus and species) is in the Spanish-language journal, Physis, the official bulletin of the Argentine Association of Natural Sciences (Asociación Argentina de Ciencias Naturales). Hernan M. Beccacece of the National University of Córdoba (Argentina) was kind enough to send me a pdf of the original paper by Orfila. Almost simultaneously in my literature review, I came across a listing of “Type material of Arctiinae…in the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales” (Rodriguez-Ramirez et al. 2020. Zootaxa 4742) which included photographs of the holotype specimen of Vianania aymara. [Incidentally, although Orfila does not explain the name, “aymara” refers to a population of indigenous people of Bolivia and their language.] As I read through Orfila’s description and looked at the photos in the other paper, I once again came to the conclusion that it ought to be recognizable in field photos. However, as of earlier today (11/26/2022), there were no observations of any Vianania or Eudesmia moths on iNaturalist from Bolivia, despite there being at least two and maybe three species occurring in the country.

So I began a search through tiger and lichen moths (Arctiinae) from Bolivia, which numbered some 1,500 observations. Several pages into this set of observations, I suddenly came across this observation by Dirk Dekker (@eldirko), made in the Sucre municipality, Chiquisaca Dept., Bolivia, in January 2021:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/68895776

It is a perfect match to Orfila’s description and the illustration of the holotype specimen (which I can’t link to because of copyright restrictions). I finished going through the rest of the Arctiids in Bolivia and found no other examples. So Dirk’s image is the first photo of a living example of the species, and to date, the only one.

The species is recognized by the combination of marks I mention in Dirk’s observation, above, namely:
-- orange collar
-- black thorax and abdomen
-- pale yellow median band on the forewings consisting of 4 separate spots (innermost reduced to a dot)
-- two yellow subterminal patches on forewings
-- hindwing broadly yellow at base, with black terminal band
From Orfila’s specimens and Dirk Dekker’s image, the species has only been documented in two locations in mountainous central Bolivia. The number of specimens which may have been subsequently taken by collectors or researchers and which are sitting in obscure collections is unknown. It makes me wonder what other unrecognized discoveries are hidden among unidentified observations on iNaturalist!

DRAFT map of the distribution of five species of Eudesmia in southern South America. Data are from iNaturalist observations as of 8 December 2022 plus a few earlier records from the literature.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Dirk Dekker (@eldirko) for uploading this important observation! I also thank Hernan M. Beccacece (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, @hernan24) and Juan López-Gappa (Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales Bernardino Rivadavia) for providing difficult-to-locate references. Jose Balderrama (@jose_balderrama) helped with Bolivian placenames. Lucas Rubio (@lrubio7) helped update the taxonomy on iNaturalist.org. Tony Iwane (@tiwane) helped me trouble-shoot the syntax for this post.

Resumen (español): Describo e ilustro la variación en el tono y el patrón de color que se encuentra en los miembros del género de polillas del liquen Eudesmia.

I recently posted a journal entry describing my "rediscovery" of a species of Eudesmia lichen moth, Eudesmia lunaris, which had been overlooked for over a century. As I mention there, part of the difficulty in identifying moths in this genus deals with their pattern and color variability. I'm still going through thousands of images to sort out additional species which may have been overlooked, but I wanted to take a moment to demonstrate how much variability there can be.

The array below shows examples of Eudesmia arida, the northernmost member of the genus and the only species occurring with any regularity in the United States (Arizona to West Texas). Since no other species in the genus has been documented in this U.S. range, I make the assumption that all the examples uploaded to iNaturalist in the region are, in fact, Eudesmia arida. (I can't make such an assumption further south in the Neotropics.)

Eudesmia arida (all), Upper row: Texas @gcwarbler | Arizona © @finatic | Arizona @psyllidhipster | Arizona @silversea_starsong
Lower row: Arizona @matt_lachiusa | Arizona @court_rae | Arizona © @jaykeller | Arizona @fowlivia

It is apparent when looking at the array of Eudesmia images for just about any species that there is variation in the following aspects:
-- Color hue: Most species show some variation in the color bands and patches from rich golden orange to pale orange, in some cases to deep yellow, pale yellow, or even creamy white color. In Eudesmia arida, most moths have relatively rich orange color patches (above, upper row), but occasional yellow forms are found (lower row). A few species in the genus, especially those in southern South America, tend to be dominated by paler color bands. The amount of color hue variation differs among species and may have regional, seasonal, and sexual components to the variation, but this has not been investigated in any detail.
-- Band widths: One of the most striking aspects is the variation in the width of the orange color bands and smaller details of their shape; note the variation from L to R in each row, above. Certain gross generalizations tend to hold true for each species but the wide variation in these aspects lead several early researchers to name new species based on perceived band-width differences from examination of very few specimens. We benefit now from the wealth of additional images of living examples in repositories such as iNaturalist. Unfortunately, some of the species described in early literature were distinguished also by details of hindwing color pattern (e.g. the width of the marginal black band on the hindwings) and the color of the abdomen, neither of which can be seen in most images of living moths in natural posture. Every image on iNaturalist which shows any hint of the hindwing or abdominal coloration is so valuable for this reason!
-- Size differences: Males of most Eudesmia species are anywhere from 10 to 30% smaller than females (see below). Combined with the variation mentioned above, this probably lead Walker to name the male and female of E. lunaris as different species. The image of a mated pair of Eudesmia ruficollis below, taken by Maria Izabel L. Mosini (@bebelmosini) in São Paulo, Brazil, demonstrates both the size disparity and color differences which can be observed in many species. The differences are not always this dramatic, but it's something to keep in mind.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/133957920

Eudesmia ruficollis, mated pair, 18 April 2020, São Paulo, Brazil @bebelmosini

A few future journal posts will deal with the recognition of other distinctive species of Eudesmia found in Mexico and southern South America which can apparently be distinguished by certain details of head/thorax/abdomen coloration. Stay tuned!