Thank you so much for your writings. Hey, how long are they attached? How long from then till she lays the eggs and then how long until they hatch? As Spock would say, fascinating!
Thank you for the regional info on winter moth species and the details on the constraints of evolutionary pressures. (Change is coming. Our warming climate is a challenge for chickadees and others. Hard for me to face.)
Ultra-light body and large wings still seems to me to fall short of an explanation for the ability of any ectothermic animal to operate in the middle of winter. I'm surprised on looking it up that their range extends into really cold regions of Europe. Is there some habitat specificity that helps out? (Meadow or open areas on the western edge of forests where they might get some warming from winter sun, etc?) Some sort of metabolic hack to go along with the aerodynamics?
Bryan: Thanks for this one. It and the solstice arrived on the first weekday morning in a long while when I have almost no work emails to deal with. Which gave me ample time to read and reflect. Flightless females and active winter insects reminds me of a story I was researching this time last year — on fireflies.
Bryan, you always have delightful surprises in store for me. I'm going to be at a hot springs this solstice, where if I'm lucky I might be able to see the stars (it's overcast here for weeks at a time in winter, which gets a lot of people down). But now I'm going to keep an eye out for moths. Happy Solstice!
Love this one! Over at my rag we have an entomologist PhD who would love this essay! I learned more about moths in this one piece than I had from all my previous reading- All hail moths and the Insecta in general. They've got the lumbering tetrapodia beat all hollow!
And all hail the return of the light, my own favorite day of the year!
How wonderful. What a lyrical and beautiful piece that manages to be quite educational too. I loved it! And couldn’t help but note the metaphor that many humans might find true of our motherhood, ultimate blessing though it may be: “it is the females that more often exchange their wings for the greater good.” Not always, of course, but there’s a bit of truth ringing there. Happy Solstice!
In the 1970s, a naturalist living in the Panamint Valley of California, Derham Giulinani, brought a flightless, strap-winged female moth to the entomologists at the University of California, Berkeley. Giuliani had collected the active moth in mid-winter on the sand dunes of Deep Spring Valley in the eastern Sierra Nevada. Subsequently, several UC entomologists spent 4 years on expeditions under icy winter conditions, finally collecting a total of 17 more, largely using pitfall traps because the females are flightless. You can find one of their papers here: https://images.peabody.yale.edu/lepsoc/jls/1990s/1994/1994-48(1)8-Powell.pdf.
This is brilliant and fascinating, Bryan. You have a talent for narrating exotic couplings... We have winter moths (Operophtera brumata) in abundance here in the midcoast. Seems safe to assume that the flurry of moths attracted to the porch lights in December are the unwanted (if still fascinating) brumata? Are the Bruce Spanworms likely to be at the lights in November? Not sure if it's worth trying to "control" the invasive winter moths by dealing with those at the lights, and certainly don't want to harm any of the spanworms, but some favorite trees were munched pretty thoroughly last summer. Your thoughts?
Thank you so much for your writings. Hey, how long are they attached? How long from then till she lays the eggs and then how long until they hatch? As Spock would say, fascinating!
Thank you for the regional info on winter moth species and the details on the constraints of evolutionary pressures. (Change is coming. Our warming climate is a challenge for chickadees and others. Hard for me to face.)
i always learn something interesting from your blog.
Fascinating essay.
Ultra-light body and large wings still seems to me to fall short of an explanation for the ability of any ectothermic animal to operate in the middle of winter. I'm surprised on looking it up that their range extends into really cold regions of Europe. Is there some habitat specificity that helps out? (Meadow or open areas on the western edge of forests where they might get some warming from winter sun, etc?) Some sort of metabolic hack to go along with the aerodynamics?
Bryan: Thanks for this one. It and the solstice arrived on the first weekday morning in a long while when I have almost no work emails to deal with. Which gave me ample time to read and reflect. Flightless females and active winter insects reminds me of a story I was researching this time last year — on fireflies.
Bryan, you always have delightful surprises in store for me. I'm going to be at a hot springs this solstice, where if I'm lucky I might be able to see the stars (it's overcast here for weeks at a time in winter, which gets a lot of people down). But now I'm going to keep an eye out for moths. Happy Solstice!
Love this one! Over at my rag we have an entomologist PhD who would love this essay! I learned more about moths in this one piece than I had from all my previous reading- All hail moths and the Insecta in general. They've got the lumbering tetrapodia beat all hollow!
And all hail the return of the light, my own favorite day of the year!
What a beautiful and dramatic love story! (dying in the cold after love making!) 🤍
How wonderful. What a lyrical and beautiful piece that manages to be quite educational too. I loved it! And couldn’t help but note the metaphor that many humans might find true of our motherhood, ultimate blessing though it may be: “it is the females that more often exchange their wings for the greater good.” Not always, of course, but there’s a bit of truth ringing there. Happy Solstice!
In the 1970s, a naturalist living in the Panamint Valley of California, Derham Giulinani, brought a flightless, strap-winged female moth to the entomologists at the University of California, Berkeley. Giuliani had collected the active moth in mid-winter on the sand dunes of Deep Spring Valley in the eastern Sierra Nevada. Subsequently, several UC entomologists spent 4 years on expeditions under icy winter conditions, finally collecting a total of 17 more, largely using pitfall traps because the females are flightless. You can find one of their papers here: https://images.peabody.yale.edu/lepsoc/jls/1990s/1994/1994-48(1)8-Powell.pdf.
This is brilliant and fascinating, Bryan. You have a talent for narrating exotic couplings... We have winter moths (Operophtera brumata) in abundance here in the midcoast. Seems safe to assume that the flurry of moths attracted to the porch lights in December are the unwanted (if still fascinating) brumata? Are the Bruce Spanworms likely to be at the lights in November? Not sure if it's worth trying to "control" the invasive winter moths by dealing with those at the lights, and certainly don't want to harm any of the spanworms, but some favorite trees were munched pretty thoroughly last summer. Your thoughts?
Fascinating!
A cracking good discussion, mates! Where else but on Substack?!