I left the MOL lure out in the garden on Sunday, which brought in another couple of Pammene sp. but again these looked to be Pammene suspectana - not a sniff of anything different so will not be hanging that one out here again, at least not this year.
So whilst I'd see enough to assure myself they were both P. suspectana, one
flew off and the other was no more so I made the snap decision to attempt my
first moth gen det of anything smaller than an Oligia sp. I knew what I was
looking for (presence of spines on sacculus for P. suspectana vs absent in P.
albuginana). I managed to tease the bits out with a lot less fuss than I had
expected, and managed to just about manipulate them enough to show the
necessary feature ....
But I have to say that trying to get the valvae flat and spread in the classic
position as you
see in the dissection websites
etc was a step too far for me. For now anyway. I'm not as dextrous as I'd like
to be and my eyesight is somewhere between 'needing reading glasses all of the
time' and 'absolutely you should be wearing varifocal glasses all of the
time', so moving from microscope to normal vision is becoming a pain. I'll get
some proper optical aids at some point, it's not a priority right now though.
Another moth that I was intending to photograph and check properly was a
presumed Spruce Carpet. I've always thought that Spruce and Grey Pine Carpets
were relatively straightforward to separate, but there is a school of thought
that many of the external characters are not sufficiently reliable, and they
can't be separated on genitalia either. But, antennal structure of males is
different (see here). I still expect that if it looks like Spruce or Grey Pine then it will be,
but it doesn't hurt to check one or two from various sites. The last one I had
was female so no point looking. This one was a bit worn and knackered and
- typically - threw a seven whilst waiting to be photographed. Still, it made
checking the antennal character easier, showing the shortly serrate antennae
of Spruce Carpet. I was also re-assured that the feature is discernible
with a x10 hand lens and a decent macro camera - but manipulating the moth to
check that would not be. I reckon the easiest thing is to tweak off one of the
antennae of a live moth so it can carry on it's way whilst still being confirmed.
Anyway, here is the forewing and an antenna through both the TG-6 and
microscope.
This one from last night has not been checked (not much point as I separated a
few from last year) ....
Grey/Dark Dagger
Orange Footman - first here since 2018
No comments:
Post a Comment