{"id":2367,"date":"2012-07-24T08:00:16","date_gmt":"2012-07-24T12:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/?p=2367"},"modified":"2012-07-22T23:41:45","modified_gmt":"2012-07-23T03:41:45","slug":"virginia-ctenuca-ctenuca-virginica-nmw2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/24\/virginia-ctenuca-ctenuca-virginica-nmw2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Virginia Ctenuca – Ctenuca virginica #NMW2012"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Virginia<\/a>

Virginia Ctenucha – Ctenucha virginica<\/p><\/div>\n

I may be nearly useless with moth identification, but this is one I know by heart. Of course, this isn’t really brag worthy since there aren’t many moths with an\u00a0iridescent\u00a0blue thorax and yellow head, but I’m working on baby steps here.<\/p>\n

Just because I can identify it doesn’t mean I can place it in the correct family however! When I was an undergrad (back in the day when I had to walk 10 miles uphill both ways, etc) I was taught the tiger moths were a family unto themselves. Since then however, they’ve been sunk into the family Erebidae, causing me much confusion.<\/p>\n

The Virginia Ctenucha feeds on a variety of grasses and sedges as a caterpillar, and adults are active from late spring to mid summer.<\/p>\n

What feeds on Virginia Ctenucha though?\u00a0Compsilura concinnata<\/em><\/a>, a tachinid fly that was introduced to North America to combat Gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar<\/em>)\u00a0in the late 19th and early 20th century. As is wont to happen with poorly understood ecology and introductions,\u00a0Compsilura concinnata<\/em> turned out to be a broad generalist, and is right at home within a wide diversity of caterpillar hosts. There’s concern that this “new” parasitoid is a contributing factor to declining saturniid moth populations in eastern North America, but the fly appears to be under heavy pressure<\/a> from a hyper-parasitoid species of trigonalid wasp, which appears to be keeping fly populations low enough to prevent eradication of native moths.
\n———
\nKellogg, S.K., Fink, L.S. & Brower, L.P. (2003). Parasitism of Native Luna Moths, (L.) (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae) by the Introduced (Meigen) (Diptera: Tachinidae) in Central Virginia, and Their Hyperparasitism by Trigonalid Wasps (Hymenoptera: Trigonalidae)<\/span>, Environmental Entomology, 32<\/span> (5) 1027. DOI: 10.1603\/0046-225X-32.5.1019<\/a><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I may be nearly useless with moth identification, but this is one I know by heart. Of course, this isn’t really brag worthy since there aren’t many moths with an\u00a0iridescent\u00a0blue thorax and yellow head, but I’m working on baby steps here. Just because I can identify it doesn’t mean I can place it in the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,23,415],"tags":[418,598,417,9,65,250,612,127,41],"class_list":["post-2367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biology","category-insects","category-national-moth-week","tag-arctiinae","tag-diptera","tag-erebidae","tag-introduction","tag-lepidoptera","tag-moth","tag-natural-history","tag-parasite","tag-tachinidae","category-75-id","category-23-id","category-415-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2367"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2370,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2367\/revisions\/2370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}