The Moths Are Coming!

My first little (outdoor) moth of the year:

Epinotia zandana, Van Patten Woods FP, Lake Co, IL  3/30/2014

This, I believe, is Epinotia zandana, one of the Tortricid moths. This is a big family of tiny critters, with approximately 10,000 species. (That's more tortricid moths than mammals in total!) Their even tinier caterpillars live on various plants, many of them of considerable economic value. As a result, quite a few are considered pests, with the Codling Moth (Cydia pomonella) shown here as an example:

Codling Moth (Cydia pomonella), Zion, Lake Co, IL 7/26/2012

Codling Moth caterpillars eat apples, from the inside out. As a result, apple growers spend millions of dollars a year trying to keep them out of their orchards, but despite that, they've colonized most of the world.

On the other hand, E. zandana caterpillars feed on hawthorn leaves, and have probably been doing so for thousands of years with no observable negative impacts. (On a population level, that is - the leaf being eaten would have a different opinion if it were capable of such, I'm sure.)

Given the status of many of these moths as pests, it's not surprising that some of them are well-studied. On the other hand, species that aren't considered pests are barely noticeable in the literature -- a Google Scholar search for E. zandana yields 10 citations, 3 of which refer to better ways to catch Tortricids (1,2,3) . Another one is simply a review and checklist of lepidoptera of Maine (4) . A similar search for the Codling Moth yielded 100 pages!

I often tell my students, the cheap way to discover a new species is to learn a bunch about some obscure group of invertebrates and then head down to the Field Museum and spend a few days in the back rooms looking through trays of specimens. Well, a fairly recent example of that was reported in 2002, when this species was first described (5):

Epiblema glenni, Zion, Lake Co, IL  7/21/2012

This is Epiblema glenni, another Tortricid. Despite all of the money and effort we've expended upon this group, there's still more mysteries than pests.

(1) Priesner, E., Reed, D. W., Underhill, E. W., & Bogenschütz, H. (1989). (Z, Z)-7, 9-Dodecadienyl acetate, sex pheromone ofEpinotia tedella clerck (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae). Journal of chemical ecology, 15(10), 2457-2464.

(2) Beroza, M. (1972). Insect sex attractant pheromones, a tool for reducing insecticide contamination in the environment†. Toxicological & Environmental Chemistry, 1(1-2), 109-134.

(3) Reed, D. W., & Chisholm, M. D. (1985). Field trapping of threeEpinotia species with (Z, Z)-7, 9-dodecadienyl acetate (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae). Journal of chemical ecology, 11(10), 1389-1398.

(4) Brower, A. E. (1983). A List of the Lepidoptera of Maine--Part 2: The Microlepidoptera Section 1 Limacodidae Through Cossidae.

(5) Donald J. Wright. 2002. A New Species of Epiblema previously confused with E. tripartitana (Zeller) and E. infellx (Heinrich) (Tortricidae). Journal of the Lepidopterists' Society, 56(4): 277-285.