{"id":1109,"date":"2012-04-01T20:27:57","date_gmt":"2012-04-01T08:27:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2012\/04\/a_bag_moth_in_residence\/"},"modified":"2012-04-01T20:27:57","modified_gmt":"2012-04-01T08:27:57","slug":"a-bag-moth-in-residence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2012\/04\/a-bag-moth-in-residence\/","title":{"rendered":"a bag moth in residence"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I took the cover off the barbecue the other day, a tiny insect caught my eye. It was moving in short, fluttering hops so was fairly easy to catch, and once I had it in a jar I could have a better look. It was less than a centimetre long, dark blue with lovely contrasting golden spots on all four of its short wings. The number of wings told me it wasn’t a fly (despite my husband’s protestations to the contrary), as did its long antennae, which were not quite half the length of its body. And I knew ‘it’ was actually ‘she’, because there on the end of her fat little abdomen were two palest gold puffs – her scent glands.<\/p>\n

We showed her to friends over dinner (barbecued lamb that had marinated for the day in a delightful mix of soy sauce, garlic, rosemary, lemon zest & lemon juice, with various other dishes on the side), but no-one knew what our little moth might be. And lacking a decent close-up lens on the camera, I couldn’t mount a photo here for other, wiser eyes to identify.<\/p>\n

But tonight I’ve just had an e-mail from our dinner guests, who identified her in a book they were browsing through in a second-hand bookstore in Thames. She’s a female bag moth, Cebysa <\/i>leucotelis<\/i>, shown here in a photo from the Landcare Research website<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"Australian<\/p>\n

This is a strongly dimorphic species, as the male – who is capable of sustained flight, unlike his partner – looks quite different, a dull brown with pale yellow spots on his hind wings & bars of the same colour along the leading edge of each forewing.<\/p>\n

The husband was suspicious, lest they be of the same ilk as the pantry moths currently littering the traps in my store cupboard. But no, bag moths apparently eat lichen & algae on the walls of buildings. So our enchanting little house guests can stay, without fear of further disturbance (at least until the next barbecue!).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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