Virginia Ctenucha Moths

Virginia Ctenucha (Ctenucha virginica)
female

I happen to have two cocoons of this moth in the mud room. I'm waiting for them to become adults. And I accidentally raised one last summer after finding a cocoon on some grasses. I brought it in and next thing I knew, I had . . .

female

The Name

First off, I'll pronounce this correctly: "ten-OOCH-ah." I've spent too many years playing this name as a funny word joke, with my moth-er friends, like we all play with Worcestershire sauce. It is time for me to respect the name. As for the Virginia part of the name . . . it is not named after the state. According to bugguide.net, "the type specimen was collected in Nova Scotia and named Ctenucha latreillana by Kirby in 1837, but an earlier specimen named Sphinx virginica by Charpentier in 1830 may have been collected in Virginia." The state of Virginia is the southern boundary of the range of this moth. "The genus name Ctenucha was coined by William Kirby from the Greek meaning 'having a comb', a reference to the showy antennae of some species." (Wikipedia) I'll talk about those combs in the next section.

I learned today that the Virginia Ctenucha is considered a wasp moth. Yet, it does not look like a wasp to me and my other wasp moths actually do look like wasps. This took a lot of digging to discover, but I found (only found today because I had not paid attention to the taxonomy of the moth), that this species is one species in the subtribe Ctenuchina.

And the subtribe Ctenuchina belongs to the tribe Arctiini. Those are the tiger moths, yet our moth here does not have the underwings of tiger moths. so I became more curious. And then I fell down the rabbit hole of taxonomy and entomology history. 

The name Arctiini is "From the type genus Arctia, from Greek meaning 'bear', for the appearance of the hairy larvae." (bugguide.net) We all know woolly bears (the larvae of Isabella tiger moths). And many of us know yellow bears, the Virginia tiger moth larvae. (And we're back to Virginia!)

So my common and widespread Virginia Ctenucha moth is both a wasp moth that does not look like a wasp and a tiger moth that does not look like a tiger moth. And it should have bear larvae . . . but I'll talk about that in a third section.

I found the answer. This is a tough paragraph to wade through, and I had to read it three times . . . slower and slower each time . . . to begin to grasp it all. But by studying taxonomy and wading through history, you can learn more supplemental information on a species than you can see outdoors. It is enrichment. I get a deeper understanding of the insect, our insect lore and fables, and our human culture that has interacted with these creatures for thousands of years.

Here, from Moths of Belize, is the paragraph that tells us about wasp moths, Ctenuchinae, and bears (I added emphasis):

The Ctenuchinae ('Wasp Moths') have long been suspected to be an 'unnatural' group, made up of unrelated species which have evolved to appear similar due to similar evolutionary selection pressures - in this case to mimic various species of wasps and other noxious insects. Recent cladistic work by Jacobson & Weller (2002) has concluded that the former 'Ctenuchinae' consist of two closely related new world tribes of the subfamily Arctiinae - the Ctenuchini and the Euchromiini - and that the mostly tropical old world 'Ctenuchines' are members of the tribe Syntomini of another Arctiid subfamily, the Syntominae. The vast majority of the former 'Ctenuchinae' (ie Ctenuchini and Euchromiini) are confined to the new world tropics, with about a dozen species ranging into North America. Most are between 20 and 40 mm in wingspan: their wings are characteristically long and thin and often possess large transparent patches in mimicry of various species of wasps and bees. Larvae are difficult to distinguish from those of other Arctiids, but feed upon grasses, lichens, mosses and various members of the plant family Apocynaceae (Scoble 1992). This group has not been catalogued or revised in detail since the major work by Hampson (1898, 1914) but the recent work by Jacobson & Weller (2002) has revised the higher classification of the Arctiidae including the former 'Ctenuchinae'. 

from Butterflies and Moths of North America (BaMoNA)

The Comb

Males have beautiful comb antennae (called unipectinate), as you can see in the two photos I took below. The first was taken last season as it nectared on milkweed. The second had a tragic fate. When I let Lucy out the other night, it flew in the house before Lucy could get her nose out the door. I turned around and found Poppy the Cat bouncing up to the bathroom sink to catch the moth. I got my photos but was unable to capture the moth because Poppy aggressively got it before I could. 

Males have the bigger antennae in order to detect female pheromones. 

male

male

The Bears

Last year when I found my first Ctenucha cocoon, I thought it was a ball of spider eggs.

My first Ctenucha cocoon

Ctenucha caterpillar

Another Ctenucha caterpillar

One of the 2 caterpillars this year.

One of the two cocooned

The cocoon broke and the pupa fell out

Our answer about the Tiger moth bear larvae is that yes, these do look like bears. Ctenucha moth larvae have two colors depending on the time: spring and early summer caterpillars are yellow and mid summer ones are dark. But they all have red feet. All of the identifications of my caterpillar photographs are confirmed. 

I became so confused when the dark pupa was visible. I had no idea where it came from. Today I learned that it came from inside the cocoon. 

The cocoon itself is made of the hair from the caterpillar. It pulls the hairs out of itself and weaves the cocoon. Sharon Perrault, of Ottawa, documented this in a series of four photos over 30 hours. It is a series that you cannot miss, so click here.

The End

Those were my burning Ctenucha questions for this year. It took the better part of a rainy summer day to read, write, collect my photos and link and format them all. I'm glad I did it. Humans saw fuzzy caterpillars and called them bears. Scientists later used that, in Latin, to name the tribe. It's amazing. My two pupae should eclose within a week or two.

_/\_/\_