Winter Moths and the Festival of Porchlights!

Dear Project PorchLighters,
As we creep up on the longest Northern Hemisphere night of the year (or put another way, the longest porchlight sampling period!), I have been getting a couple of what are likely Winter Moths (Operophtera brumata) visiting my back porch in Hamilton, Massachusetts these last several weeks- https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&taxon_id=60780. This species is an invasive species from Europe and a species in which the caterpillars can do a lot of leaf damage to trees and blueberry bushes in particular. No great numbers around my light to date, which may hopefully be explained by the biological control methods that have been employed in New England to reduce the ecological and agricultural impact of these pests:
https://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2018/09/umass_amherst_scientists_claim.html

http://www.wbur.org/news/2018/02/26/winter-moths-record-low-population

With that, monitoring locations where these control strategies may still be needed is important, so even though many of us in New England will not likely see a moth for the next several months, please do keep checking those porchlights for their presence. Also know that the Bruce Spanworm Moth (Operophtera bruceata)—a species native to North America and congenitor (same genus- Operophtera) to the Winter Moth-https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&taxon_id=121236 — may also emerge during this time period, and they are very similar in appearance to each other (certainly beyond my identification skills), thus most of my observations are just at the genus level. The more you know, the more that you realize how much you don't know! That said, there are researchers who are interested in both species, so any observations you can provide are valuable (particularly with good photos).

More information on Winter Moths can be found here:
https://massnrc.org/pests/pestFAQsheets/winter%20moth.html

https://bugguide.net/node/view/247161

https://ag.umass.edu/landscape/fact-sheets/winter-moth-identification-management

https://www.massaudubon.org/learn/nature-wildlife/insects-arachnids/nuisance-moths/winter-moths

In lightness...
Stan

Posted on December 4, 2018 06:12 PM by srullman