It’s National Moth Week!

Butterflies may be considered the showiest of winged insects, but moths are pretty awesome, too. And there are a lot of them. In fact, The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation says about nine moth species exist for every one butterfly species globally!

In celebration and appreciation of these typically nocturnal creatures, the 8th annual National Moth Week is July 20–28. Here at Florida Native Plant Society, we’re going to highlight seven moth species this week—one per day—that have lifecycle relationships with our native plants. We’ll kick it off tomorrow with a post about one of the larger, more well-known moths, the beautiful Luna.

National Moth Week events are being organized around the globe, and online registration is available for group and individual activities.

You can also participate in a citizen science project through iNaturalist. This project provides a place to share photos and contribute to the body of knowledge about moths. So far, more than 3,600 moth species have been identified in the project.

“National Moth Week has introduced thousands of citizen scientists around the world to the fascinating world of nighttime nature,” said NMW co-founder David Moskowitz. “People of all ages and abilities can document moths in their local habitats and contribute their photos and observations of these important creatures.”

Interested in learning more? Check out this Xerces blog and video about moths.

National Moth Week is a project of the Friends of the East Brunswick Environmental Commission (Friends of EBEC), a 501c-3 nonprofit organization, and has been held annually since 2012.

by Laura Bennett-Kimble of Passionflower Chapter, edited by Valerie Anderson

Comments

Jean Evoy said…
I am doing a presentation on Daytime Moths at the Rotunda West Community Center on July 26th at 1 pm. Can I post some of my pictures of daytime moths on native plants on this blog site?
Hi Jean! Of course, we would love to see your photos of daytime moths on native plants.
Could you tell us more about your presentation? What group is it for? What will you be speaking on? We love to highlight our knowledgeable members.
Jean Evoy said…
I will be talking about several of the Crambid moths. They are small, but often quite colorful and many of them nectar on native plants. They seem to like Coreopsis, a native plant that is not often used by butterflies.

I also have a section on colorful moths like the scarlet bodied wasp moth, several of the wild silk moths, and Bella, of course. Like Bella, the scarlet -bodied wasp moth has a fascinating way of providing chemical protection, not only for itself and its mate, but also for their progeny. I end the presentation with a discussion about Yucca Moths. They are little white moths, but their association with yucca plants is a classic example of co-evolution.

I would be happy to post some of the pictures from my presentation, but I do not know how to post them on this blog.
Jean Evoy said…
I tried to post a comment and download a few pictures of moths on native plants, but was not able to do it.
If you email them to me (communications@fnps.org) I will be happy to feature them in a separate blog post!

You could also put them on a cloud service like Google Drive and post links to them in your comments.

We have to have 'moderation' for blog comments turned on because of the vast quantities of spam comments we get. You won't see your comment immediately, but once I approve it, it will be visible.

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