Last Saturday, the Museum of Life and Science, in partnership with the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association, hosted a public moth night on the museum grounds. I helped to organize this event, and was joined by NCBP members Carol Tingley and Tom Howard. The event was in conjunction with the 2023 Durham BioBlitz, and attendees were encouraged to submit their sightings through iNaturalist.
The other day, John Petranka and I went to investigate an irruption of moths along the Haw River in Alamance County. We were following a tip that great numbers of Petrophila moths had recently been observed along the banks of the river. What we found was unlike anything I have ever seen.
Over two decades ago, Steve Hall and Bo Sullivan conducted a multi-year survey of sites along the North Carolina coast as part of an effort to assess the impact of spraying to control the spread of the invasive Spongy Moth (Lymantria dispar) in the state. One of the sites that they heavily sampled was Carolina Beach State Park. Located south of Wilmington in New Hanover County, the park lies on a narrow strip of land between the Cape Fear River estuary and the ocean.
Nothing against butterflies, but moths are seriously underrated. Butterflies are but a strange, wonderful, and relatively small evolutionary branch of Lepidoptera, an order which is primarily made up of moths. Just look at our species totals for North Carolina: 178 species of butterflies and nearly 3,000 species of moths. We are continuously adding new moth species to the state list (the true moth biodiversity may be closer to 4,000 species), while the butterfly checklist remains static.
A new species of Palpita Hübner (Crambidae, Spilomelinae), Palpita maritima, sp. n., is described from maritime forests of the coastal plains of southeastern United States.
As a proxy for body size, forewing lengths of individual geometrids and noctuids were measured with respect to altitude of capture site in five species in North Carolina and one in Costa Rica. Number of specimens ranged 48–373 per species, number of capture sites 2–15 per species, and site altitudes ranged 2–2209 m. Forewing length in all six species increased significantly with increasing altitude at rates of ≈ 0.3–≈ 1.1 mm/500 m.
Moths, butterflies, and grasshoppers were surveyed within four longleaf pine preserves owned by the North Carolina Nature Conservancy during the growing season of 1991 and 1992. Over 7,000 specimens (either collected or seen in the field) were identified, representing 512 different species and 28 families. Forty-one of these we consider to be distinctive of the two fire-maintained communities principally under investigation, the longleaf pine savannas and flatwoods.
Moths and butterflies were sampled at monthly intervals over a one year-period at four sites within the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsular region: Pettigrew State Park, Goose Creek State Park, Jockey’s Ridge State Park, and Nag’s Head Woods Ecological Preserve. Goals were to characterize the lepidopteran fauna for the region as well as for the individual preserves.
Ecological impacts of the use of the microbial insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis var. kurstaki (Btk) to control the gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar (L.)) and other forest pests have been documented for deciduous forest habitats in the northeastern United States and mixed forest habitats in the Pacific Northwest.