INVERTEBRATE ALERT
This blog provides an informal forum for terrestrial invertebrate watchers to post recent sightings of interesting observations in the southern Vancouver Island region. Please send your sightings by email to Jeremy Tatum (tatumjb352@gmail.com). Be sure to include your name, phone number, the species name (common or scientific) of the invertebrate you saw, location, date, and number of individuals. If you have a photograph you are willing to share, please send it along. Click on the title above for an index of past sightings.The index is updated most days.

2022 August 2 morning

2022 August 2 morning

    Yesterday’s appeal for someone to identify a crane fly shown in yesterday’s posting bore fruit.  Scroll down to August 1 to see what it was!

   Jochen Möhr sends a photograph of a beautiful  Golden Jewel Beetle that landed on his deck in Metchosin.

Buprestis aurulenta (Col.: Buprestidae)  Jochen Möhr

   Jeremy Tatum shows a Rusty Tussock or Vapourer Moth.  The caterpillar was shown on July 15.  This moth is a male.  You can tell that not only because of its elaborate antennae, but also because the female has no wings!  Many plants have been recorded as larval foodplants;  this individual was reared on Mahonia.

Rusty Tussock or Vapourer Orgyia antiqua (Lep.: Erebidae – Lymantriinae)  Jeremy Tatum

Here’s a Yellow Woolly Bear found yesterday at McIntyre Reservoir.

 

Yellow Woolly Bear Spilosoma virginica (Lep.: Erebidae – Arctiinae)  Jeremy Tatum