JUNE 7, 2019
by Natalie
Van Hoose, Florida
Museum of Natural History
Deborah
Matthews hunts for plume moths in darkness, waiting for the halo of her
headlamp to catch a brief flicker. About the size of mosquitoes, the delicate,
feathery moths fly only a few feet at a time. Matthews must watch for that
short flight while keeping clear of poisonwood, cracks in the limestone and
sinkholes, common hazards of fieldwork in the Bahamas.
Her
vigilance, deftness with a net and more than 30 years' experience working on
plume moths and their host
plants helped her discover four
new species, bringing the number of known plume moth species on the islands to 23.
Plume moths
are microlepidoptera, another name for tiny moths, and are understudied compared
with larger, more charismatic species. But when Matthews, a biological
scientist at the Florida Museum of Natural History, first joined a plume moth research
project in 1987, she got hooked.
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