moths should become real

Moth-obsessed aroace weirdo. it/its

[sideblog-with-everyone]

hello im @qzvk here's a photo of an eyed hawk-moth

[mossworm]

entomologists should avoid FSCA (Gainesville, FL) at all costs

I’m going to go into more detail about my workplace eventually but for now it’s important to make public that ethanol holdings in the Florida State Collection of Arthropods (FSCA, Gainesville) are completely neglected and actively rotting. Holotypes (the original specimen of a plant or animal used to define a species, completely priceless and the pride and joy of any good collection) are already ruined. Don’t ever donate your stuff there, it will go to waste.

Everything that is not personally interesting to the administrators has clearly been totally ignored for decades and priceless scientific information has been lost as a result. It is the worst I have ever seen, having worked in three other collections previously. I was lucky I had not formally donated most of my own collection material there because I guarantee they would have barred me from ever accessing the specimens again and then neglected them all to destruction anyway. Other people have not been so lucky and multiple scientists have their life’s work trapped in there and deteriorating. Admin is not above blocking former employees or whistle blowers from using the collection, even if it is your own material.

Here is how FSCA was keeping the holotype of the rare cave millipede Scoterpes rudis. The ethanol should be clear, but I had to fish the actual specimen out of the opaque yellow slime with forceps. Many others were just like this when I found them, and I did my best to care for them all but there was clearly already permanent damage years before I was even hired. I’m really sorry for the poor solifugid biologist who has to try to get useful information out of the holotype that is just a small wad of legs and glue now.

Many of the specimens, including some holotypes, are like this centipede, with the rubber stopper having degraded into a glue-like material and dripped onto the specimen. Reaching this state requires years of total neglect because you can see the rubber start to wilt long before it drips. All it takes to fix this is replacing the stopper more than once in a century, but apparently that was too much to expect of the “world class” FSCA.

FSCA higher-ups recently presented a big cheesy video at the Entomology Society of America meeting in Nov 2022 in Vancouver, patting themselves on the back for the size of the collection and soliciting new collaborators and donations. They are constantly seeking to acquire more material even though they are running out of space and totally incapable of maintaining what they have already. The other staff are completely aware, but apparently only concerned with their own personal research material and individual favorite bugs.

I would appreciate if you all could share this with anyone you know interested in entomology, natural history collections, or biology in general. I suspect my former position will open for new applicants almost immediately because of how many different aspects of the operation I supported out of a genuine love for entomology and curation. Now that I am gone, the ethanol collection is likely completely abandoned. Please do not give this pathetic institution and its staff more things to ruin.

-Mossworm

[ultimatebugpoll]

ROUND 1 OF THE TUMBLR INSECT POLL

Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) or Mantodea (mantises)<br>

Lepidoptera

Mantodea

Voting ended onMar 5, 2023

[randimoth]

heyyy could u pls explain in more detail what's the difference between male and female moths ?,? is there variation in gender differences between species ? if so what is the gender difference u consider the coolest

The difference primarily lays in that females lay eggs, males don't. A lot of other differences are species-specific: there are even different chromosome systems for different species of moths, such as Taleporia tubulosa with a ZZ-ZO system or Cydia pomonella with a WZ-ZZ system. The dimorphism in moths is highly varied on the species, and there's no singular rule that can be used to judge it based off the appearance alone. Some potential signs involve the following (though endless other examples can be provided): · Antennae variance. One of the more well-known tells of this type is on many Saturniidae or Geometridae species: males have large plumose, or feather-like, antennae, while the ones on females are either completely missing the growths that make them have a feathery shape or have them much smaller. While moth species where males and females each have simple antennae are widespread, I'm not aware of any where there are similarly-complex feathery antennae on both.

A different antennae tell is on many Adelidae species: the males have very long antennae, exceeding the body length by several times, while the females keep it to a more reasonable size.

· Wing variance: Many moths have wings of different appearance, such as Io moths (Automeris io) which are yellow for males and brown for females. An especially obvious variation of this is for the Oiketicus kirbyi species: only adult males have wings at all. Similar variance can be seen in water veeners, Acentria ephemerella, where most females are flightless, though still having wings.

· Size. Some moths have different sizes depending on gender. Usually, the females are larger due to the egg-laying organs needing to take up some space. In other cases, the difference is negligible or even the other way around. This is more obvious in many Saturniidae species, where females can exceed the males in size by a significant margin.

For many moths, there's just no way to easily tell apart the difference, without doing an in-depth analysis of the insides or of the behaviour to find out whether they produce eggs or not. And, honestly, it's not much of our business to know it for everyone.

[randimoth]

Alypiodes flavilinguis is a very recent species of moth. While first described under that name in 1863, the name was later considered to be a synonym (i.e. the same species as) of another species within the Alypiodes genus. They were separated into a separate species on the 8th of July 2021, with the publication of the article arguing such in a prestigious Lepidopterology journal, based on DNA barcodes, larval characters, and adult markings of the species. In more simple terms, "new moth just dropped".

[randimoth]

Dognin's satin or Rosy crown satin (Aithorape roseicornis). Not going to talk much about this fellow compared to some other ones that were here, but the antennae certainly deserve to be called rosy crowns here, don't they?

[randimoth]

The Gothic moth (Naenia typica) played a small role in early zoological taxonomy. The primary start point of modern taxonomy is taken to be 1758, with the publishing of the 10th edition of Systema Naturae by Carl Linnaeus. This book is the first attempt at categorising animals into a consistent, binomial (i.e. with two parts: genus and species) naming scheme, with kingdoms split into classes, then orders, genera, and finally species. This system has been expanded upon over the years, but stayed similar in structure with the primary change being a shift from a rank-based one off the internal and external organ structure to a cladistic one based on the last common evolutionary ancestor.

In particular, one of the animal orders created in that book still used today is Lepidoptera, which were categorised as insects with 4 wings covered in flat scales (hence the name, meaning "scaly wings"). Lepidoptera were split into 3 genera: Papilio including all butterflies, Sphinx including all hawk moths, and Phalaena – which included the other moth species. The bugs were distributed across genera according to their similarity to the type species of the genus. The species picked for the Phalaene genus was Phalaene typica, the Gothic moth, making this arguably the most moth-y moth to exist.

The Phalaene genus eventually got split into multiple genera, and it only exists as a remnant of the early days of taxonomy nowadays. Currently, the moth is in the Naenia genus, hence the name of Naenia typica. Regardless, this is the most moth of all time.

[randimoth]

Mad hatterpillar (Uraba lugens) is a moth with a fairly interesting caterpillar, consisting of its own skulls. Everytime the caterpillar sheds its exoskeleton, the skull remains attached to the head, which is fairly metal. Have seen this be referred to as the 'Big hat boy' in a relatively serious source, though this name doesn't appear to exist there anymore, being declared an invalid common name. Nonetheless, this seems like a fairly fitting name for the caterpillar. And, similarly to many other unusual animals such as Creatonotos Gangis, this one comes from Australia. While this may be stemming from confirmation bias, it's a somewhat humorous stereotype of Australian animals being unusual.

[randimoth]

The Lappet (Gastropacha quercifolia) has an irregular wing shape, allowing them to disguise more easily as leafs in the nature. Personally, one of the interesting things about this moth is the variance of its names across different languages, as English just doesn't have one, instead defaulting on the name that it uses for the entire family. Some languages take on the resemblance to an oak leaf, such as Dutch (Eikenblad, or oak leaf), French (La feuille morte du chêne, or dead oak leaf) or Russian (Коконопряд дуболистный, or oak leaf cocoon-spinner). Others use the colouring, like German (Kupferglucke, or copper eggar), Danish (Has a variety of names, such as Kobberbrun takspinder, or copper-brown spike-spinner), or Swedish (Rostfärgad bladspinnare, meaning rust-coloured leaf-spinner). Finnish calls them Pihlajanorsu, meaning rowan elephant, where rowan is the name of one of the bushes the larvae feed on. 'Elephant' likely refers to the elongated, snout-like, mouth parts. Though, not a speaker of most of these languages, so the translation may be incorrect since it was primarily a dictionary look-up of the terms, particularly doubting the Danish one. Many of these use the word 'spinner' within of them, which is the name of the moth family in these languages, since the caterpillars tend to live in nests spun out of silk.

[randimoth]

Nematopogon swammerdamella, a moth that has a taxonomic name almost as long as the antennae. That is just one of the species in the Adelidae family, which has the common name of "Fairy longhorn moths," named after the appropriately-sized antennae. Unfortunately, only the male moths of the family have them as large as they are here.

[randimoth]

Kentish glory (Endromis versicolora) is another moth species with very decorated and beautiful wings. Despite the common name, they're relatively rare in the actual region of Kent, instead being far more widespread in Scotland. Outside of Great Britain, they're relatively widespread in the centre of Europe: from the Pyrenees and Italy to Fennoscandia and the Urals.

[randimoth]

Skullcap skeletoniser moth (Prochoreutis inflatella). A completely metal-looking name, and the moths themselves are incredible as well. The 'skullcap' part comes from one of the plants that they commonly feed for: Scutellaria lateriflora, which has a variety of common names that involve skullcaps (such as Blue skullcap or American skullcap). 'Skeletoniser' is a biological term that means a moth whose larvae eat the cell tissue of the plant, leaving the skeleton behind. For example, eating the green parts of the leaf, leaving the white parts connecting it to the stem intact.

[randimoth]

Beautiful yellow underwing (Anarta myrtilli). Just to note, the 'beautiful' in this case is actually a part of the common name for the species, as they do not fall into the genus commonly called 'Yellow underwings' (Noctua). Though, that doesn't make their hindwings any less yellow.

[randimoth]

Moon eyetail moth (Mania lunus) has a very complex and beautiful pattern and is fairly large as far as moths go.

[randimoth]

Photos are taken by itchydogimages on flickr. Moore's Silksong (Ernolatia moorei) has this silly-looking resting pose as if it came crashing down onto a leaf with very fast speed.

[randimoth]

hey man, wondering what camera you use to photograph the moths? good stuff !

Sorry, the photos are taken off internet rather than being taken personally. Could find and credit the actual photographers in the future (where applicable) as to not create any confusion and to actually let people know who took the photos.

[randimoth]

Brazilian horned devil (Citheronia laocoon) is another very nice moth fellow. Some of the more well-known moths in the English-speaking internet include the Regal moth (Citheronia regalis) and the Imperial moth (Eacles imperialis), and this fellow appears like a mixture of both, although being much more related to the former one as the taxonomic name suggests. It's nice to occasionally take a well-known moth species and just look at other species within the same genus, sometimes there can be real beautiful fellows among them.