Moth Mystery

[James Taylor]

I posted the following to "MOTHRA" this morning, and it occurs to me I may be missing some expertise elsewhere. If you get this twice, please use the "cancel" and get on with your life.

Folks:

I have (to me) a moth mystery. I have been a casual collector of 
Notodontidae - principally because they look muchly like Noctuids. I 
looked at my Heterocampa guttivitta the other day, consisting of 
some 40+ specimens collected mostly here in Savannah between 1993 
and the present, and between the months of March and October. I 
noticed they ALL had pectinate antennae almost to the apex, with a 
few simple segments at the end.

I checked with my friend W. T. M. Forbes, Part 2, pages 203 and 
following, and that matches for males, but he says H. guttivitta 
females have simple antennae. I then flipped them over and looked at 
the frenulum on each. A single spine. A drop of alky on the wings of 
a few show a narrow accessory cell. I then disected one (to look at 
the genetalia and the eighth sternite) and that matches the 
illustration for H. guttivitta. 

Although Forbes said the male and female are similar, I figured I'd 
check it see if I had mis-IDed some females. Data for my bugs is on 
my PC, making searches easy. A short C++ program produced a list of 
all Notos caught on the same date as my H. guttivitta specimens. I 
looked at these carefully, and the ID is OK (most are P. angulosa, 
which sport a tell-tale scale tuft on the inner margin of the FW.)

It seems to me that in 40+ specimens I'd have at least a few 
females. Anyone have an idea - other than we have only homo bugs in 
Savannah?

Jim Taylor  

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