Seneca Meadows Moth Blacklighting Night's Journal

Hello everyone! We'd like to present the final (for now) species tally for our moth night. We apologize for the delay in getting this compiled - we hoped to give it some time for more of the observations to become Research Grade but given that it's stalled for a bit now, we might as well put together the list. In the meantime, our event was featured in iNaturalist's July newsletter!

Overall, we found 27 moth species! For how chilly it was that night, this is certainly respectable. Even so, while there wasn't a huge diversity of moths, some of the species we did get were rather unusual and uncommon in our area; the pink-streak moth has no other upstate NY records on iNat, and the four-lined borer moth has no NY records on iNat at all! The community composition of the moths we found also reflect the surrounding landscape - the waterlily leafcutter is a wetland moth, the ironweed plume moth and purple carrot-seed moth likely came from the gardens right around the building, and many of the moths we saw are associated with weed grasses found in human-modified areas. The insect communities present in a location can tell a story about the land, and give us a clue as to the quality of the habitat around us for biodiversity and ecosystem health.

So without further ado, here is our species list. Please note that only around half of our species have been verified by an expert, although we have done our very best to correctly identify these moths. This means changes may occur at a later point - this will be reflected on the observation itself, and you can see an updated species list by going to the 'Species' tab on the project. What we present to you now is a current snapshot. Those that are not Research Grade at time of writing are denoted with an asterisk.

Family Crambidae
Elophila obliteralis - Waterlily Leafcutter Moth
Paracorsia repandalis - Scarce Straw Pearl
Parapediasia teterrellus - Bluegrass Webworm Moth*
Pyrausta acrionalis - Mint-loving Pyrausta

Family Depressariidae
Depressaria depressana - Purple Carrot-seed Moth*

Family Erebidae
Apantesis nais/phalerata - tiger moth sp.*
Caenurgina crassiuscula/erechtea - looper sp.*
Macrochilo orciferalis - Bronzy Owlet
Phalaenophana pyramusalis - Dark-banded Owlet
Rivula propinqualis - Spotted Grass Moth
Tetanolita floridana - Florida Tetanolita

Family Geometridae
Anavitrinella pampinaria - Common Gray
Biston betularia - Peppered Moth
Chlorochlamys chloroleucaria - Blackberry Looper
Iridopsis larvaria - Bent-line Gray
Xanthotype sp. - crocus geometer moth complex

Family Glyphipterigidae
Diploschizia impigritella - Yellow Nutsedge Moth*

Family Noctuidae
Dargida rubripennis - Pink Streak Moth
Leucania sp. - wainscot sp.*
Protodeltote muscosula - Large Mossy Glyph
Resapamea stipata - Four-lined Borer Moth
Tricholita signata - Signate Quaker*

Family Notodontidae
Gluphisia septentrionis - Common Gluphisia Moth

Family Pterophoridae
Hellinsia paleaceus - Ironweed Plume Moth*

Family Torticidae
Ancylis sp. - leafroller moth sp.*
Cochylina sp. - leafroller moth sp.*
Sparganothini sp. - sparganothid leafroller sp.*

Thank you to everyone who attended our moth blacklighting event at Seneca Meadows Education Center on 7/26! While it was chilly and we did not see a large quantity of moths, the species we did see were interesting and unusual. I (Molly) am in the process of identifying and uploading photos of all of these species to the iNat project, and soon I will be able to compile a species list for the night. I recommend joining this project if you have not already done so - this way you will be notified when I publish this final tally!

Learn more about National Moth Week: https://nationalmothweek.org/
Learn more about Bee Campus USA @ ESF: https://www.esf.edu/sustainability/projects/bee_campus.php

The field guide we used at our event is the Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Northeastern North America by David Beadle and Seabrooke Leckie.

We saw many other interesting insects during our event as well! If you'd like to learn more about singing insects like katydids, check out: https://songsofinsects.com/
And for aquatic macroinvertebrates like mayflies and caddisflies: https://www.macroinvertebrates.org/

Thank you for your support and your interest in conservation. We hope to see you at future events!