for the cautionary suggestion. I have looked carefully at the spread images of both these Nemapogon sp. on the BOLD web site; e.g. http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Taxbrowser_Taxonpage?taxid=10464 and conclude that my image is a much better fit to N. auropulvella. Specifically, essentially all the N. auropulvella images have a dark patch at the median of the costa that is roughly rectangular (rather than semicircular or triangular in N. tylodes) and all images have much weaker, less defined dark markings at the inner margin of the HW (versus the very dark patch visible in the dorsal view of N. tylodes that you showed). I would note that one of the N. tylodes images on BG (the one from Tom Murray) looks to me much closer to the BOLD images of N. auropulvella (and to my image). I would much appreciate your further comments.

It looks to be a good fit to both of your submissions and also the one from Tom Murray. Nothing else in the Subfamily Nemapogoninae matches anything like as well. I'll see if I get any more comments before moving it to species. How do you capture such great images?

Hi Nigel,
For the micros, I use the Canon MP-E65 1x-5x Macro with the 5D MarkII camera. This lens has a maximum distance to subject of 4 inches. It has no focus ring. I sometime use a focusing rail but most of the time I use my thumb and forefinger as a rail with the thumb on the camera lens body and the forefinger on the wall. Alternatively I hold the subject leaf (for example) with two fingers and focus with the thumb controlling the distance to subject. It really requires use of a lens-mounted twin flash (in my case) or a ring-flash so you can get a decent depth of focus with the aperture at 16. When using the 2x magnification, I use F13. With the (difficult to use) 5x setting, F8 gives the best resolution. My other macro lens is the lovely Canon 100L Macro.

for the detailed photo information. I may have to invest in a real macro lens. I make do with a 28-80 mm zoom on my Nikon D7100, which has all sorts of problems particularly for these micro moths!