Jeff Smith, curator of the Lepidoptera collection at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, just curated this super micro moth, a fairy longhorn moth. It has a wingspan of 1.4 centimeters. (Image by Jeff Smith)
If you're accustomed to seeing large moths with a 10-inch wingspan, you won't believe this micro moth.
Entomologist Jeff Smith, volunteer curator of the prized Lepidoptera collection at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, UC Davis, has just curated a metallic Papua New Guinea (PNG) moth with a 1.4 centimeter wingspan--and with long white antennae twice the length of its body.
He keyed it to the family, Adelidae, and genus, Nemophora, but not to the species. It's a fairy longhorn moth that Bohart Museum entomologists collected nearly 30 years ago.
And it may be a new species.
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Jeff Smith with his curated tiny moths and spreading board. (Photos by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
French entomologist Charles Théophile Bruand d'Uzelle (1808-1861) first described the family in 1851. "Most species have at least partially metallic, patterned coloration and are diurnal, sometimes swarming around the tips of branches with an undulating flight," according to Wikipedia. "Others are crepuscular and have a drab coloration. Fairy longhorn moths have a wingspan of 4–28 millimeters, and males often have especially long antennae, 1–3 times as long as the forewing."
"The Papua Insects Foundation website does not list this Family Adelidae, so I could not browse any list of species there," Smith said.
"In California we have many different species in this family, and all with the characteristic VERY long antennae," Smith said. "iNaturalist shows a few species that are very similar to this one but none from the general region of PNG."
The fairy longhorn moth has been in the Bohart Museum collection since about 1998.
A map that shows Papua New Guinea, where the Bohart Museum entomologists collected moths in 1998. (Wikipedia map)
"In about 1998, Bohart Collections Manager Steve Heydon and entomologist Terry Sears spent a month in Papua New Guinea with the permits to collect and export material, and worked in two different villages," Smith said. "People living there were hired to collect and field pin insect specimens, and it was estimated that over 1 million specimens of arthropods were brought back to the Bohart Museum."
Over the next two years, Smith spread the wings of nearly 20,000 moths and butterflies, with "a great deal of excess eventually passed along to other museums," he commented. "In the past year I finally worked on hundreds of micro-Lepidoptera that I had avoided initially, and this wonderful little metallic moth was within that material. It is a treat to uncover and finally curate such a gem."
Smith said the website, Papua Insects Foundation, spearheaded by entomologists of Dutch descent "has been a phenomenal help in allowing me to get accurate species ID's on many hundreds of species, but the website is a constant work in progress for this amazing country, and at this time the Family Adelidae is not covered.
"Either that, or these professionals are not aware that any members of the Adelidae are even in PNG. Our specimen could very well be an undescribed species and new for that country. There continues to be a tremendous amount of knowledge we still have to gain in the world of insects, and as we learn what exists in tropical habitats it can lend weight to the need to preserve them."
The Bohart Museum, founded in 1946 by UC Davis entomology professor Richard Bohart (1913-2007), currently houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens. The Bohart Museum is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus.
Bohart Museum director is Professor Jason Bond, the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair of Insect Systematics in the Department of Entomology and Nematology, and the executive associate dean, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. He succeeds UC Davis Distinguished Professor Emerita Lynn Kimsey, who directed the Bohart Museum for 34 years until her retirement in 2024.
