Category: Bombycoidea
-
Macroglossinae
This is last of 3 posts on the subfamilies of the BC Sphingidae, the sphinx moths. There are 11 species in this subfamily in two tribes. Like my other posts on the Sphingidae, this’ll be a little light on photographs for now. I’ve only seen 4 members of this group. Dilophonotini The Hemaris are a…
-
Sphinginae
The previous post tackled the Smerinthinae, a subfamily of the Sphingidae. This post looks at another: the Sphinginae. There are 9 species reported here in BC, though Agrius cingulata and Lapara bombycoides are unlikely to be seen – see below. I’ve only seen 4 species at this point, so this post will have a few…
-
Smerinthinae
Let’s take a look at a subfamily of the Sphingidae (sphinx moths), the Smerinthinae. There are 6 species in the province, but iNat has a tantalizing 7th that was reported, incongruously out of range, somewhere in the Cariboo. Assuming the identification is correct it’s probably safe to say it arrived via anthropocentric means. But the…
-
Saturniidae
Let’s look at one of the more flamboyant families: the giant silk moths. There are ~2300 species globally but we have only 7 here in BC, found in two subfamilies, the Hemileucinae and Saturniinae. Our moths have a wing size of 60-140mm, but in the tropics some species get up to twice as large (280mm).…
-
Coping with weight
I remember seeing my first Cyanothus silk moth (Hyalophora euryalus) on my front door a few years back. It was close enough to the ground that our idiot dog may gotten curious and accidentally done it some harm, so I moved it to a nearby tree. Once I got it onto my warm hand it…
BC Moths 