@caterpillarscount.bsky.social
Citizen science project on the abundance and phenology of 🐛🐞🦗🐝🦋🕷. Seeking new participating sites! Learn how to participate on our website! https://caterpillarscount.unc.edu
Now online! In this review, we cover four major topics on butterflies and moths: their evolutionary history and diversification dynamics, genomics, global diversity patterns, and conservation 🦋🌏 (1/8) @natrevbiodiv.nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
learningmole.com/backyard-eco... You don't have to visit somewhere exotic to see complex ecology in action. #ecology #nature #gardens #science
18.02.2026 01:41 — 👍 12 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 1
Check out our new preprint from the @insectai.bsky.social project! Seven steps to making the most of automated insect monitoring systems and AI.
A huge collaborative effort expertly led by @jamiealison.bsky.social and Luca Pegoraro 👏
📸🦋✨️
The bone collector caterpillar is a carnivorous caterpillar that lives in spider webs.
It disguises itself with the corpses of the spider's prey, while stealing food from their eight-legged host's web
🧪
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Wow, UK moth recording really on the up. Nearly 900K records in 2025, probably reach over 1 million in due course. Well done everyone. National Moth Recording Scheme meeting online now @savebutterflies.bsky.social
31.01.2026 10:24 — 👍 44 🔁 10 💬 0 📌 0
A large display with thousands of insects, most of them tiny
A section of the display of bugs
Another section
Another section with some of the larger bugs
This is really cool, it's a display of all the bugs found on a single tree.
#Invertebrate
The magic of Christmas Eve was another stunning male Atlas moth. My 5th Atlas of the week. Finding these magnificent magical moths means so much to me.
25.12.2025 06:36 — 👍 287 🔁 52 💬 5 📌 2
Spiny oakworm caterpillars. Black caterpillars with yellow stripes and thorny protrusions head down on chewed leaves
Pretty fuzzy orange moth. Triangle shaped
They are ubiquitous in my neighborhood!! They cover entire branches of sidewalk oak trees. I rarely see the adults but they are gorgeous in both forms!
20.12.2025 11:43 — 👍 15 🔁 4 💬 1 📌 0
Want to see a deeper summary of what was found at a given monitoring site?
Check out individual site reports which can be found here
caterpillarscount.unc.edu/reports/
#insects #bugsky #citizenscience
What a terrific year for #insectmonitoring with Caterpillars Count!
Which sites and users conducted the most surveys, found the most caterpillars, found the largest caterpillar?
Check out our 2025 Site Awards here
mailchi.mp/432f840dbbd6...
An orange moth with maroon mottling, seen from above on a green leaf. Its proboscis is out and touching the leaf.
Here is your Monday Moth. I think this pretty little insect is Portentomorpha xanthialis. They're found from the southern U.S. down into S. America; this one was in Colombia. #bugsky 🐙🌿
15.12.2025 21:16 — 👍 80 🔁 11 💬 0 📌 0
This monkey slug caterpillar (Phobetron sp.) from Ecuador has evolved to look like a discarded tarantula molt. This one mimics the tarantula Avicularia juruensis (see my previous post) so accurately, down to the pink toes and yellow bands! The hairs cause skin irritation, just like Avicularia hairs.
16.12.2025 14:34 — 👍 90 🔁 18 💬 2 📌 1
New study on arthropod declines @natecoevo.nature.com 🪲
In two time series @jena-experiment.bsky.social & @bexplo.bsky.social we show how community (dis)assembly underpins local biomass declines.
It mostly boils down to species loss, with identity losing relevance.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
New study confirms that short wavelength light (UV & blue) attracts the most nocturnal insects & that intensity increases attraction for all colours. Longer wavelength & lower intensity outdoor lights should reduce biodiversity impacts resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #teammoth 🌍
26.11.2025 14:08 — 👍 77 🔁 25 💬 1 📌 3
Close shot underneath the leaf, the spiky pair of horns of the caterpillar looming above, with the mouth below the wide mantle of the creature, munching on the center vein of the leaf
Vote of the creature munching the oak leaf, back-lit. He creature is wide and flat and green, bordered nearly all the way around with spiky tubercules
Side view of the creature, hard at Munch
Checking in on Flatty Munchipede, who is halfway through an entire oak leaf 💚
(Isla textula, the crowned slug moth)
Three Rhododendron Leafhoppers, with green and red markings, lined up on a green Rhododendron leaf.
Does anyone know why Rhododendron #Leafhoppers seem to line up like this? Makes them look bigger? Using the same leaf vein to feed? Precursor to mating? #Entomology
21.10.2025 10:00 — 👍 6 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
A macro photo of a moth, seen from the side, on brown bark. The moth has white wings with lots of dark speckles, and a pattern of four orange vertical stripes, plus a row of dark spots above, with reflective scales in the centers. The effect creates a pattern that looks like a jumping spider seen face-on; the orange stripes mimic legs, and the dark spots mimic a jumping spider's row of large eyes.
For #Arachtober, here is a spider that's not a spider. It's Petrophila jaliscalis, a jumping-spider-mimicking moth - see the face-on spider pattern, with orange legs and sparkly dark eyes? I love finding these - I think they breed in my small goldfish pond, because the caterpillars are aquatic. 🌿🐙
13.10.2025 19:24 — 👍 164 🔁 29 💬 4 📌 1
See also:
Woody angle caterpillar, garden ghost spider, Harmostes fraterculus, Euborellia arcanum (earwig)
Clockwise from top left:
3-cornered alfalfa hopper, sad ground crab spider (didn’t seem sad), Phytocoris tibialis, 20-spotted lady beetle
Even before @inaturalist.bsky.social identifiers have had more than a few hours for ids, we added 100+ species to our previous total of 517
10.10.2025 22:17 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Some ento-highlights from the UNC fall BioBlitz today
10.10.2025 22:14 — 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0
A pirouetting caterpillar is a good way to start the day!
In this case, a balletic banded tussock moth (Halysidota tessellaris)
Time to join in on this #arachtober fun
Spotted orbweaver
Found what was probably the same caterpillar as yesterday elsewhere on the porch and decided everyone needs to pay more attention to caterpillar feet!
03.10.2025 23:01 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
semi realistic drawing of a Red-banded leafhopper, a very thin insect with a yellowish green body and bright blue and red striped back/wings, on a black background.
semi realistic drawing of a Red-banded leafhopper, a very thin insect with a yellowish green body and bright blue and red striped back/wings, on a white background.
Day 2 #Invertober2025 - Red-banded leafhopper (Graphocephala coccinea) 🍁
#SciArt #invertebrates
Datana - the yoga experts of the #caterpillar world!
(In this case, Datana contracta)
Lots of migrants this morning in NC, including a warb-ton of redstarts, as well as parulas, magnolias, chestnut-sideds, cuckoos and more.
May we take a moment of silence to remember the many #caterpillars that I observed being consumed this morning. They had a good larval life in the name of #birds
BirdCast map showing 440.8 million birds in flight at 9;10pm EDT.
NEXRAD radar map showing birds and weather.
Windy map showing winds along eastern U.S. and out in Atlantic Ocean.
Also, birds are migrating again tonight. East coast migrants are getting a good tail wind thanks to those hurricanes out over the ocean.
#birds #fall #migration
#LightsOutForBirds
Green planthopper with wings longer than its body, and a long pointy snoot like the prow of a ship
Snoot
27.09.2025 14:22 — 👍 83 🔁 15 💬 0 📌 0
The idiom "like a moth to the flame" dates to at least the 12th century, to Persian love poem "Layla and Majnun". Shakespeare references it in "Merchant of Venice."
But here's the thing. Moths DON'T fly to flames. And we're just now understanding that.
Let's talk about dorsal light response.
