Espece du Jour: Aphomia sociella
The Common Swift, subject of my post a couple of days ago, was not the only moth to be attracted to DF's porch light on Saturday evening. There was another, but I had no idea what it was. Most British lepidoptera are 'micromoths', a taxonomically meaningless term. As the name suggests, they are often - though not always - smaller than 'macromoths'. They have a reputation for being 'difficult', and it's true that many of them are dingy brown or grey things with many species looking very much alike. The real distinction between the micros and the macros is the amount of space they get in the popular field guides - macros get page after page, micros a token sample of species at best.
The micro I photographed on Saturday night was actually quite large. And whilst it might not be startlingly patterned, it is nevertheless quite attractive in its own subtle way.
I made a cursory look for it in my books and drew a blank, which is unsurprising since it turns out not to be in them. Fortunately the good people at iSpot came to my rescue and identified it for me as a Bee Moth, Aphomia sociella. Rather an odd name for it, I thought, since it looks nothing like a bee. But it gets its name for a different reason altogether, and I tip my figurative hat to the microlepidoptera. If micros are good at anything, it's at exploiting food resources that other animals ignore.
The larvae of the Bee Moth live in bee hives and chew their way through honeycomb. They are therefore not fondly regarded by bee-keepers, though bumblebees are as good as honey bees as far as the Bee Moth palate is concerned and the specimen above probably spent its larval stage in a bumblebee nest. This particular niche seems to be a specialty of the subfamily Galleriinae, a division of the much larger family Pyralidae to which many of the larger and more distinctive micros belong.
Other species in the subfamily are known as waxworms, this obviously referring to the larvae rather than the adults. They can be significant pests of commercial beehives, but they are also a tasty snack for lizards. Many people keep reptiles as pets, and waxworms make a tasty snack for a pet gecko when its birthday comes around. The larvae can also be used as fishing bait. And so waxworms are bred and reared commercially to cater for the pet reptile trade. It's a small industry, but a thriving one, and until this morning I'd never heard of waxworms and had no idea it existed.
The micro I photographed on Saturday night was actually quite large. And whilst it might not be startlingly patterned, it is nevertheless quite attractive in its own subtle way.
I made a cursory look for it in my books and drew a blank, which is unsurprising since it turns out not to be in them. Fortunately the good people at iSpot came to my rescue and identified it for me as a Bee Moth, Aphomia sociella. Rather an odd name for it, I thought, since it looks nothing like a bee. But it gets its name for a different reason altogether, and I tip my figurative hat to the microlepidoptera. If micros are good at anything, it's at exploiting food resources that other animals ignore.
The larvae of the Bee Moth live in bee hives and chew their way through honeycomb. They are therefore not fondly regarded by bee-keepers, though bumblebees are as good as honey bees as far as the Bee Moth palate is concerned and the specimen above probably spent its larval stage in a bumblebee nest. This particular niche seems to be a specialty of the subfamily Galleriinae, a division of the much larger family Pyralidae to which many of the larger and more distinctive micros belong.
Other species in the subfamily are known as waxworms, this obviously referring to the larvae rather than the adults. They can be significant pests of commercial beehives, but they are also a tasty snack for lizards. Many people keep reptiles as pets, and waxworms make a tasty snack for a pet gecko when its birthday comes around. The larvae can also be used as fishing bait. And so waxworms are bred and reared commercially to cater for the pet reptile trade. It's a small industry, but a thriving one, and until this morning I'd never heard of waxworms and had no idea it existed.