Subject: Re: Does this moth exist?

From: [email-masked] (Doug Yanega)
Date: 28 Feb 1995 15:16:53 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, MS LYNN L MONROE
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>      I've not seen this moth but have seen other moths sleeping in desert
> composites, usually in the early morning.  Is this common with moths or
> limited to a very few genera or species?
>      Thanks.  Lynn Monroe

For certain groups of moths, it is characteristsic - the best example I
know of is a small noctuid in the genus Schinea which rests in the flowers
of Indain Blanket (Gaillardia) - the moth is colored dark rose at the wing
bases and lighter at the tips, exactly matching the petals of the flower,
and it almost inevitably rests facing the center of the flower (thus
blending in almost perfectly).
-- 
Doug Yanega
Illinois Natural History Survey, Center for Biodiversity
607 E. Peabody Dr. Champaign, IL 61820  USA
"There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is
    the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick

---

From: MS LYNN L MONROE <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 1995 23:07:11 EST

I'm trying to track down a desert moth as to family without any success.
The mother is mentioned in Edmund C. Jaeger's DESERT WILD FLOWERS (1941):
"the beautifully patterned, satin-brown, night-flying moth, Thyerion
ligeae, rests during the daytime in the center of the flower of the Mohave
aster [Xylorhiza (Machaeranthera) tortifolia]."  I've tried to look up this
name in a catalog of N.A. Lepidoptera.  The closest I can find is the genus
Thyreion, with two species listed, rosea and snowi, both Noctuids in the
Heliothinae group.  I'm wondering if Thyerion ligeae ever existed, or if
the name has changed completely since 1941.  Any help will be greatly
 appreciated.
     I've not seen this moth but have seen other moths sleeping in desert
composites, usually in the early morning.  Is this common with moths or
limited to a very few genera or species?
     Thanks.  Lynn Monroe