 |
The Poweshiek Skipper Project | |
| Lake Hawthorne ©Rayford
Ratcliff
Introduction Information about the butterfly
O.
poweshiek, Legacy butterfly Legacy
of Chief Poweshiek
H.W. Parker's writings Von Blixum's Heroic Experiment
Iowa's
biological diversity
The Poweshiek Skipper Project Goals
of the project
|
Moths Historically there has not been a lot of information
available about the species of moths in Iowa. Fortunately there has
been some recent work. Jim Durban, Keith Summerville, and Frank
Olsen have done a lot of work with the group, and have documented 1227
species (as of December 14, 2008) from Iowa. Moths range from very small species with wingspans of less than an inch (often termed micromoths) to the very large luna and polyphemus moths. Moths are usually considered to be less colorful than the butterflies, but if you look closely at them you will discover that is not true. Moths can be among the most colorful of the insects. In addition, moths are important because they are major pollinators of plants. The moth on the top photo is one of
the micromoths, Spragueia leo. It was on top of a ragweed
flower. The moths to the left are snowberry clearwings, Hemaris diffinis. Snowberry clearwings are usually considered to be bumblebee mimics. I watched some individuals as they were obtaining nectar from flowers. Suddenly, one knocked another one right out of the air and both fell to the ground. A few minutes later this couple crawled up the vegetation. Then they flew. When the flew, both were on the same horizontal level, and one flew forward while the other flew backwards, apparently with little effort. |
Their list can be found at Jim's web site, 