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.

July 13

2016 July 12

 

   Jeremy Tatum shows a photograph of a Nycteola species reared from a caterpillar found at Blenkinsop Lake, where the moth was released today.  The species N. frigidana and N. cinereana can be difficult to tell apart.  It is often thought that the caterpillar of the former feeds on willow, and the latter feeds on poplar. I have often felt a little uncertain about that, because willow-feeding caterpillars often feed on poplar as well, and vice versa.  Anyway, I am pretty sure that this moth is Nycteola cinereana, although the caterpillar was found and reared on willow, not poplar, so the above rule is evidently not completely watertight, and not to be relied on for identification.

 

Nycteola cinereana (Lep.: Nolidae)    Jeremy Tatum

 

 

   Two more colouful photographs of a leafcutter bee, in Gorge Park, from Annie Pang:

 

Megachile perihirta (Hym.: Megachilidae)  Annie Pang

 

Megachile perihirta (Hym.: Megachilidae)  Annie Pang

 

 

   Aziza Cooper reports a Western Spring Azure from Brighton Avenue, July 12.  This is just two days after another one was seen in Sidney (See July 10).