Thursday 13 June 2019

Four new species of plume moths discovered in Bahamas


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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