By Reba Kocher

Listen to this blog post here: dead_leaf_butterfly.mp3

A beautiful orange oakleaf butterfly.

If you know me then you know how much I absolutely LOVE body painting, especially the camouflage ones (If you don’t know what I’m talking about click here: https://www.pinterest.com/ecammack/camouflage-bodypainting/). My excitement for really cool camouflages also extends to the animal kingdom, so when I’m scrolling through social media and see that National Geographic posted another photo captioned “can you find the ____?”, I am super pumped. I can’t help it; I love seeing evolution in action. Okay, so what does this have to do with this blog post? Well, there is a butterfly that is SO good at camouflaging that it is considered one of the best in the ENTIRE animal kingdom. It’s called the Dead Leaf Butterfly.

The Dead Leaf Butterfly, aka Kallima inachus or the orange oakleaf butterfly, lives in Tropical Asia, like India, Thailand, Vietnam, and Japan. They feed on sap, over-ripe fruit, and nutrients found in puddles (this is called mud-puddling). When their wings are open, they are bright orange and brown on their forewings and a bright blue and brown on their hindwings. When they close their wings, however, that is when things get exciting. Their closed wings mimic a dry, brown leaf. They are the same shape and color--all the way down to mimicking the vein found on leaves! What’s even cooler is that their underwings change depending on the season. During the dry season, when they are less active, they are brighter and look more like the dry leaves that would be found in the region. In the wet season, they are more muted and even develop “eyespots” on their “leaf” side wings! This is extremely helpful because it deters birds, ants, and wasps from recognizing them as food.

The Dead Leaf Butterfly in the wet season vs the dry season (Image credit: Rahul K. Natu/Wikimedia; Sumita Roy Dutta/Wikimedia)

Check out this cool video of the butterfly fluttering its wings: https://youtu.be/RBdbGPK1ZlQ?t=243

References & Further Reading

https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/blogs/creatura-blog/2018/09/this-dead-leaf-butterfly-has-a-dazzling-secret/

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/12/141210-butterflies-evolution-darwin-leaves-mimicry-science-animals/

https://my.chicagobotanic.org/events/butterflies_n_blooms/dead-leaf-butterfly/

By Reba Kocher

Listen to the blog post here: mandolin moth.mp3

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Mandolin Moth just hanging out

Today’s lepidoptera comes from the Noctuidae family. This family is also known as the owlet moths because of their drab, brown, and owlish colored wings. The Noctuidae are the second largest family of lepidoptera with 11,772 species! Because of new evolutionary research being done, the clades are constantly changing, so we might be seeing this number change over the next decade (learn more about evolutionary trees here: https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/search/imagedetail.php?id=260)

One of the coolest members of this family is Rileyiana fovea, also known as Thecophora Lederer or the Mandolin Moth. This moth is found mostly in Eastern Europe, but it can also be found in the Mediterreanean. They have tan and brown wings and big, hairy tan bodies. The interesting part about this moth is that the males when looking for mates play a song. Their bodies, unlike other moths and butterflies, are not flat. Instead, they are concave like a mandolin (hence the name). On one of his wings he has a knotted vein, which he scratches with his hind leg. This sound creates a romantic and irresistible song that attracts any female Mandolin Moth nearby. I’ve been looking for a video or sound clip of the song, but I have not had much luck. This seems to be a pretty rare moth, and there are not many guides written about it. If you make it to Austria or Bulgaria, you might be able to see one and hear his song!

A graphic that shows you the knotted vein and the hairs on the moth's leg used in this mating song.

By Reba Kocher

Listen to this blog post here: Unexpected_Cycnia.mp3

Because it is Lepidoptera Month, I want to bring awareness to an endangered moth found in Ohio. It is called the Unexpected Cycnia (pronounced “sik-nee-ah") Moth. It is a type of tiger moth, and it looks very similar to the Dogbane Tiger Moth or Delicate Cycnia. As a caterpillar, it has an orange body with grey or black tufts of hair sticking up. In the spring, it emerges as an adult, and it is a stark white color with a light orange line that goes around its head and extends less than halfway back to the wingtip. It lives mostly in the Western region of Ohio, specifically in Oak Openings near Toledo and in the prairie barrens of Adams County.

A photo of two Unexpected Cycnia Moth caterpillars.

Two photos of an adult Unexpected Cycnia Moth. The one on the left shows the moth resting with closed wings. The one on the right shows the moth with open wings, and it gives you a better view of its body.

I am sure you are all tired of me shouting my love of milkweed from the rooftops, but it really is one of the most important genus of plants for pollinators! The Unexpected Cycnia feeds exclusively on milkweed. You can find their eggs and caterpillars on butterfly-weed, which is a milkweed species. One of the reasons why this moth is endangered is because of habitat modification and habitat succession. This means that their habitats, which are a mixture of high quality barrens and dry grassland, are changing. It is mostly due to urbanization and the destruction of grasslands. By removing native plants, like the milkweed, these moths do not have any food sources left, and that is causing them to die at a fast rate! So please be very careful when you see caterpillars and try to keep milkweed around if you can! The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) has a conservation plan in place for the Unexpected Cycnia, so hopefully their numbers will begin to increase again. These moths are the most active during June, July, and August. If you get to see one and get a photo, please share it with us! We love seeing all of your photos of Ohio creatures and plants!

References & Further Reading

http://wildlife.ohiodnr.gov/portals/wildlife/pdfs/publications/id%20guides/pub5467.pdf

https://monarchlab.org/resources-links/blog/wanted-unexpected-cycnia-observations

https://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species/Cycnia-inopinatus

http://wildlife.ohiodnr.gov/portals/wildlife/pdfs/proposed%20rule%20changes/Species%20of%20Greatest%20Conservation%20Need.pdf

https://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811/23380/V090N1_033?sequence=1

By: Reba Kocher

Listen to this blog post here: Hummingbird Moths.mp3

A hornworm caterpillar aka the tomato plant's worst nightmare

Have you ever seen those scary, bright green Hornworm Caterpillars in your tomato garden? They eat through whole stalks--leaving you with nothing. They are a gardener’s nightmare! They ate their way through my entire tomato garden last year, and I was outside every single day picking them off of my plants. As annoying as they are as caterpillars, they metamorphosize into awesome moths called Hummingbird Moths, or sometimes called Bee Hawk-Moths.

Hummingbird Moths are found in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. In the United States, we have two common species: the Snowberry Clearwing and the Hummingbird Clearwing.The Snowberry Clearwings are more commonly seen in the western United States, while the Hummingbird Clearwings are more commonly seen in the eastern United States--like Ohio. They have heavy, stout bodies and long front wings. They are generally a reddish-brown color, but some of them are colored more similarly to bees. Hummingbird Moths, like other lepidoptera, have scales covering their wings. Some species, however, lose many of their scales (hence the name clearwing). They can be found in open meadows, forest edges, and, of course, your gardens. So why are they called a Hummingbird Moth, you ask? Well.. they look and act so similarly to hummingbirds that, unless you are trained to spot the differences, you might mistake one of these moths for an actual Hummingbird!

A photo of a Hummingbird Moth drinking nectar. You can see through his wings, which means that he has lost some of his scales.

Another image of a Hummingbird Moth with his proboscis out and his scales more easily seen.

Hummingbird Moths fly and move just like Hummingbirds. They can beat their wings up to 70 beats per second and can fly as fast as 12 MPH. Unlike other moths, they fly during the day, and they can remain suspended in the air as they unfurl their proboscis (feeding tube) and eat nectar from flowers. They will eat from a variety of flowers species, but they are likely to be spotted near bee balm, phlox, verbena, and honeysuckle. They tend to lay their eggs on the bottom of honeysuckle, dogbane, hawthorne, cherry, and plum leaves. This is because these are larval food plants. It is possible to see adult Hummingbird Moths flying in early spring, but it is more common for you to see them in the summertime as the bee balm begins to bloom. As adults, just like other lepidoptera, they are pollinators. So even though we tend to hate those fat, green caterpillars, do not kill them! We need them to transform into Hummingbird Moths and pollinate as many native plants as they can!

Fun Fact: I’m sure many of you have seen Silence of the Lambs (1991), and if you remember, Hannibal Lecter placed the cocoon of the Death’s Head Hawk Moth in the mouths of his victims. That Hawk Moth is related to the Hummingbird Moth! They had hornworms on the set too! Read about the glamorous lives of these caterpillars and moths here: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102926/

References & Further Reading:

https://www.massaudubon.org/learn/nature-wildlife/insects-arachnids/hummingbird-moth-clearwing-moth

https://www.farmersalmanac.com/hummingbird-moth-32556

https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/pollinator-of-the-month/hummingbird_moth.shtml

https://texasbutterflyranch.com/2012/06/21/loathed-by-gardeners-tomato-hornworms-morph-into-magnificent-sphinx-moths/

https://butterflywebsite.com/articles/hummingbird-moths.cfm

https://www.insectidentification.org/insect-description.asp?identification=Hummingbird-Moth

Columbus Dispatch article on them: https://www.dispatch.com/article/20130803/LIFESTYLE/308039736

Information about them in Ohio: https://trekohio.com/2016/04/19/the-hummingbird-moth/

By: Reba Kocher

Listen to this blog post here: Moth__Butterflies._the_difference_is_night__day.mp3

To celebrate our upcoming Butterfly Enclosure Exhibition (June 25-June 30), each week we will have a blog post about a new kind of butterfly or moth! We also want to post some weekly butterfly social media facts. So please keep an eye out on our Facebook and Instagram pages for some awesome posts!

To kick off the week, we are going to answer a question that we get a lot. What is the difference between moths and butterflies?

But before we get right into the differences, I think it is important to know about their similarities. Butterflies and moths both belong to the order Lepidoptera, and within this order, there are 170,000 species worldwide--making it the second largest order of insects behind Coleoptera (beetles)! Both moths and butterflies have two pairs of wings covered in overlapping layers of fine scales. They also eat the same way by uncoiling their proboscis (feeding-tube) and sucking nutrients from flowers and puddles. When not in they aren’t feeding, the proboscis gets wrapped around their head. They also share the same four stage of their life cycle: eggs, caterpillars, pupae, and adulthood. Read more about their life cycle here: http://www.butterflyschool.org/new/meta.html

Now.. the differences. It’s easier than you think!

Moths

• Active at night
• Most are dull colored
• Stout body
• Rests wings folded, tent-like, over its back
• Antennae are usually thicker and often feathery

Butterflies

• Active by day
• Brightly colored
• Thin body
• Rests wings held back erect over body
• Antennae are thin and thickened at the tip

This is a Polyphemus Moth, which can be found in Ohio. You can tell it is a moth because: the body is thick, the antennae is feathery, and the color is a dull brown color.

This is a Monarch Butterfly, which you will start seeing in Ohio really soon! If you didn't recognize this Monarch as a butterfly, a few indicators would be: the slender body, the thin antennae that get thicker at the tip, and its bright orange and white colors.

Now that you are all experts at telling the difference between moths and butterflies, go outside and see what you can find! If you find some really cool ones, post it to your social media account and tag us! We love seeing your photos! Participate in our social media game this week: "Is this a moth or a butterfly". And once June 25 rolls around, bring your friends and family to the Butterfly Enclosure Exhibition. We hope you will be there!

References & Further Reading

https://www.livescience.com/34472-difference-between-moth-butterfly.html

https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/butterflymoth.html

http://www.butterflyschool.org/new/meta.html

https://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/