Lichen-camouflaged inchworm
Sam found this on May 17, 2010 crawling on some rocks. It was clearly some kind of inchworm, as it had no prolegs in the middle of the body and moved by inching along. It also had a fringe of kind of fleshy protrusions along its belly, which is an odd feature in an inchworm that I hadn’t seen previously.
Overall, the camouflage tended to make it resemble lichen-covered rocks or bark. I think the fringes helped the camouflage by breaking up the outline between the caterpillar and the surface it was sitting on.
This turned out to be a fairly hard one to identify, because lichen-like camouflage is pretty common in caterpillars. I put it up on BugGuide for some time, and the only suggestion was from shotguneddie, who thought it could be one of the Catocala, known as “underwings”. This is evidently based on the fringing, which a number of catocala have. I’m not so sure, myself, because I think the underwing caterpillars generally have more prolegs than this one and aren’t what I personally would consider “inchworms”. The thing is, though, the fringing does not appear to be a feature of any of the geometrids (the classic inchworms) . . . I’m . . . seeing . . .
Wait a minute.
Here’s one: the “Pale Beauty”, Campaea perlata, also known as the “Fringed Looper” because it has that same belly fringe that our specimen has here! The general camouflage is pretty close too, so it probably is some relative of this one, at least.
Well. In that case, it looks like a fairly standard and quite common inchworm, that will eat leaves off of pretty much any kind of tree. And the adults are good-sized white moths. Hey, I’ve photographed several white moths, maybe I’ve got one. Let me check my files –
Nope, I don’t seem to have one of the adults. Although, this one (taken on the side of our house on August 1, 2010) is pretty close.
The wing shape, pose, and size are all a good match, and it has the faint horizontal line running across all four wings, but those four brown spots at the leading edges of each forewing wouldn’t be there in the real Pale Beauty. It’s pretty clearly a close relative, though. And, since I’ve only got a couple of pictures of it, I might as well post it here as anywhere.
On further examination, I guess that the moth is actually the Lesser Maple Spanworm, Speranza pustularia, and not the Pale Beauty. The brown spots along the otherwise white forewing are evidently diagnostic for the species. They are related to each other (both are in the subfamily Ennominae), but they aren’t in the same genus. Still fairly close, though. The Pale Beauty and Lesser Maple Spanworm look a lot more similar as adults than they do as caterpillars – the spanworm caterpillar is more of a smooth green and lacks the belly fringing.
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Spanworm, looper, Pale Beauty — by any name that moth is a beauty. Welcome back. I was wondering this morning if there would be something wiggly from the UP when I opened Google Reader!
Something Wiggly from the Yoop — now there’s another domain name you might want to nab!
Isn’t solving the mystery fun!
Brilliant, Holmes!
It was fun trying to figure it out. And I recently found out something interesting about BugGuide: it turns out that when submitting a picture for ID, it is better *not* to submit it under “ID Request”, because then the only people who see it are unspecialized hobbyists like me.
The best thing is make a good stab at at least the order, if not the family, and submit it there. It seems that the actual experts only look at the new items that come up in their area of expertise, because there’s too much new stuff for them to look at everything. So they normally just browse through the items that get posted directly into the order that they are interested in.
Thank you for such quality photos of Lichen-camouflaged inchworm. I wonder if it’s a bark eating caterpillar known as bark-miner? I cannot find images and can’t figure out what it looks like but I guess you could.
JUST to be factually correct (6 years later)…
The Pale Beauty Moth (Campaea perlata).
is a pale blue/green with a bright white overtone of dust, while the “bandings” remain darker blue/green…
https://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species/Campaea-perlata
The Large Maple Spanworm Moth (Prochoerodes lineola).
Appears as a “dead brown leaf”, similar to an Ash leaf. Dark brown with Tan dusting & the bands remaining darker brown to simulate a stem & main vain like a leaf…
https://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species/Prochoerodes-lineola
WHAT YOU HAVE A PHOTO OF HERE IS:
A…
Faint-spotted Angle
(Digrammia ocellinata).
Quite faded however the main signature and simulated crease markings are still present to give the opportunity to properly identify.
https://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species/Digrammia-ocellinata
I am a Sighting Coordinator for BAMONA
Butterflies And Moths Of North America.
https://www.butterfliesandmoths.org
Bkripto
I hope this helped!!!
:- ) ♥ \m/
Bill
As for the Caterpillar…
It appears to be a Litter Moth)/Ambiguous Moth [CATERPILLAR] (Lascoria ambigualis)…
In it 4th or 5th instar stage.
ALL Moths/Butterflies begin as a Larvae (worm), and molt as they grow. At first, they will all resemble one another until the grow & molt into what they are, after 5 “molts” or ONSTARS, They’ll Cocoon or Chrysalis until they ecase & emerge as the Moth/Butterfly that it is… See here for this particular species…
http://bugguide.net/node/view/1009535/bgpage