Identification, Images, & Information
For Insects, Spiders & Their Kin
For the United States & Canada
Clickable Guide
Moths Butterflies Flies Caterpillars Flies Dragonflies Flies Mantids Cockroaches Bees and Wasps Walkingsticks Earwigs Ants Termites Hoppers and Kin Hoppers and Kin Beetles True Bugs Fleas Grasshoppers and Kin Ticks Spiders Scorpions Centipedes Millipedes

Calendar

TaxonomyBrowseInfoImagesLinksBooksData
Photo#1041742
NW Yosemite Fairy Moths - Adela eldorada - male

NW Yosemite Fairy Moths - Adela eldorada - Male
Between Mather and Hetch Hetchy Dam, Yosemite National Park, Tuolumne County, California, USA
May 22, 2011
Found perched on grass in a complex of flowery terraced meadows at ~4300' elevation, high on the south wall of the canyon of the Tuolumne River, southwest of Hetch Hetchy Dam. The meadows were nestled amidst rocky benches supporting vegetation of chaparral with scattered oak and pine.

This can be seen to be a male from the large eyes (diameter about 4 times the distance between the eyes); long antennae (about 3 times the forewing length); and...in this species...the conspicuous amount of orange on the head. Note the orange on the head of the male here is duller than the bright orange of the female's head seen below from the same population:

   

Note that the apical white bands in the male and female above are broken, whereas the apical white band in the male below (again, from the same population) is unbroken:

   

Powell(1) found that 70% of the males, and 45% of the females, had broken apical white bands in his sampling of A. eldorada.

Note, furthermore, that in all these individuals the white bands are relatively wide compared to typical A. trigrapha...though, to my eye, the intervals of variation in the band widths within each species seems to overlap between the two.