Tag: Lepidoptera

Immaculate white: New moth species preferring dry habitats is a rare case for Florida

Spreading its wings over the sandhills and scrub of peninsular Florida, a moth species with immaculately white wings has remained unnoticed by science until Mr. Terhune Dickel brought it to the attention of Dr. James Hayden of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. As a result of their research, published in the open-access journal ZooKeys, the authors have also included a key to facilitate the recognition of different pale-winged moths and their close relatives.

With its taste for much drier habitats such as the sandhills of peninsular Florida, the new species, called Antaeotricha floridella, is a noteworthy case among the moths and butterflies. This kind of endemism is, however, quite common among other groups of insects and spineless animals.

Initially confused with another very similar and widely distributed species, called Antaeotricha albulella, the herein described moth was found to be actually quite different when dissected by co-author Terhune Dickel.

After Mr. Dickel showed specimens to Dr. Hayden, they noticed that its forewings are immaculately white, unlike those of its close relatives within the pale-coloured endemics for the New World. Their wings tend to differ in colouration on a species level and are often spotted, however minute these contrasting patterns might be. While the new species has its forewings always in snow-white on the upper side and its hindwings – in pale gray, its kin, A. albulella, has either one or two black spots of black on its own forewings and white or pale-gray hindwings.

Currently, not much is known about the new moth species’ feeding habits. The evergreen sand live oak is the only plant that it has so far been confirmed to feed on. However, the researchers do not exclude the possibility that the new species could use a wider variety of oaks as hosts.

The occurrence of the moth exclusively in the dry areas of peninsular Florida fits an ecological pattern, and it is likely that more species, currently assigned under incorrect names, will be found in the state’s sandhills and scrub.

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Original source:

Hayden JE, Dickel TS (2015) A new Antaeotricha species from Florida sandhills and scrub (Lepidoptera, Depressariidae, Stenomatinae). ZooKeys 533: 133-150. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.533.6004

To be fragrant or not: Why do some male hairstreak butterflies lack scent organs?

Female butterflies generally choose among male suitors, but in the tropics with hundreds of close relatives living in close proximity, how can they decide which males are the right ones? After all, if she mates with a male of another species, she is unlikely to have surviving offspring. One solution is that males of some species have scent producing organs on their wings, so if a male has the right smell, the female will presumably be receptive to his advances. Strangely, males of some species lack these scent producing organs, which would seem to be a huge disadvantage.

Biologists have theorized that when a species loses a male scent producing organ during evolution, its closest relatives do not occur in the same places. In other words, the female does not have to choose among males of the most closely related species, and the males do not devote energy to producing scents.

A team of researchers, led by Dr. Robert Robbins from the Smithsonian Institution, digs into this question in a small group of Latin American butterflies in a study published in the open access journal ZooKeys. Two newly discovered representatives in this butterfly group possess scent pads while their closest relatives do not. The researchers report that scent pads were lost evolutionarily twice in this group, and as predicted, in each case, the species without the scent pad does not co-occur with its closest relative. The present study adds more evidence to accumulating support for the explanation why some males lack scent pads.

Evolutionary losses, such as the one observed herein in Thereus oppia and related butterflies, are quite common, as Dr. Robbins and collaborators have observed in a previous research. Such disappearances of male secondary sexual features have been explained by geographic isolation of a species from its closest relatives, and the butterflies in this study are no exception.

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Original source:

Robbins RK, Heredia AD, Busby RC (2015) Male secondary sexual structures and the systematics of the Thereus oppia species group (Lepidoptera, Lycaenidae, Eumaeini). ZooKeys520: 109-130. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.520.10134