Early spring moth, Artemisia - Euxoa immixta

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Home » Guide » Arthropods (Arthropoda) » Hexapods (Hexapoda) » Insects (Insecta) » Butterflies and Moths (Lepidoptera) » Owlet Moths and kin (Noctuoidea) » Owlet Moths (Noctuidae) » Cutworm or Dart Moths (Noctuinae) » Noctuini » Agrotina » Euxoa » Subgenus Euxoa (Euxoa Subgenus Euxoa) » silens group (Euxoa silens group) » Euxoa immixta - Hodges#10753 (Euxoa immixta)

Photo#1377003

Copyright © 2017 John van der Linden

Early spring moth, Artemisia - Euxoa immixta

Battle Bluff Prairie SNA, Vernon County, Wisconsin, USA
May 30, 2017

Preliminary ID for host is Artemisia campestris var. caudata (A. Bartz, pers. comm.)

March 2015 Tiny leps found mining leaf tips of wormwood, Artemisia sp., on a hill prairie (Battle Bluff Prairie SNA), when host plant has only just begun to grow and most plants are still dormant

February 21, 2017 First visit to Battle Bluff under a WI DNR research permit...and lo! There are the larvae again. My notes say: "Sunny, ~60 degrees F. Found 2 of the Artemisia larvae -- both tiny, first, maybe second instar. The first was curled around a leaf tip. The second I found by parting the leaves in the center of the shoot/crown [of a wormwood plant]. Only 1-2" of growth on the Artemisia." 1 larva collected for rearing

February 28 Photo shoot, captive larva

March 5 Four more larvae collected for rearing

March 19 Two more larvae collected for rearing, bringing the total number of captive caterpillars to 7.
While on site on March 19, B. Crawford and I use his very nice video camera to record a few larvae feeding and moving around on their hostplant. You can see the footage here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJk0LjZ5WBjf11dqMH2cf6H_4p7FIWZtK

Thanks very much to Brad for capturing the majority of the footage and for contributing the equipment and skills needed to make the filming possible.

March 26 Photo shoot, older larva

April 23 First pupa

May 9 All seven caterpillars collected from Battle Bluff are pupae

May 30 First adult...at last! Shown in this series

Images of this individual: tag all

Early spring moth, Artemisia - Euxoa immixta

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Contributed by John van der Linden on 31 May, 2017 - 3:06pm
Last updated 7 February, 2018 - 11:36pm

Full Write-up

John's blog post does an excellent job putting this discovery into context: https://fraxinus-nathist.blogspot.com/2018/03/an-early-spring-blessing.html

… Brad Crawford, 31 March, 2018 - 1:44pm

Moved

Moved from Euxoa.

… Kyhl Austin, 7 February, 2018 - 11:36pm

Moved

Moved from Owlet Moths.

Chris Schmidt, noctuid specialist at the CNC, says this is a Euxoa species (and he'll see if he can narrow it down when he gets back to the office from his trip to Yukon). I'll let you move the other related photos.

… Charley Eiseman, 29 June, 2017 - 5:09pm

Any further word

from Chris about this one?

… John van der Linden, 2 January, 2018 - 9:20pm

You'd better try bugging him directly... Let me know if you need contact info.

… Charley Eiseman, 2 January, 2018 - 9:48pm

Chris dissected these

and determined them to be Euxoa immixta. He also mentioned via email that it is "an eastern Great Plains species but there are isolated records now for Tennessee and Maryland."

… John van der Linden, 7 February, 2018 - 8:40pm

Nice!

My hunch was right! Always nice to add a new species to the guide.

… Kyhl Austin, 7 February, 2018 - 11:34pm

Agreed

Thanks Kyhl!

… John van der Linden, 8 February, 2018 - 9:50am

Excellent!

Great work John, and Kyhl, you never cease to amaze me!

… Charley Eiseman, 8 February, 2018 - 10:01am

Will do, thanks

Just found his contact info here.

… John van der Linden, 2 January, 2018 - 9:54pm

Done

Thanks so much for passing this along to the specialist at CNC...I'm so happy to have some more information about this moth. If it would be useful to Chris I do have three specimens of the adult I'd be happy to share.

… John van der Linden, 3 July, 2017 - 2:37pm

Nice work!

Note that the date in the data field should reflect the date the photo was taken, rather than the date you collected the larvae. I'm curious how late into the season / larval development they were still feeding as leafminers, and what they did afterwards--did they just feed exposed on foliage?

I look forward to learning what species this is!

… Charley Eiseman, 1 June, 2017 - 6:11am

Ach

I've been doing it wrong all along. Thanks for correcting me :)

I didn't keep notes as to exactly when it happened but I'd say they were leafminers for roughly the first third of their time as larvae, after which they switched to cutting notches or chunks out of the leaf lobes (not just mining them) and then eventually eating large parts of leaves / whole leaves. As they got larger I provided them with soil and they burrowed into this for the daytime, sometimes dragging pieces of hostplant with them. Even as very young captive larvae they were noticeably light-sensitive and would crawl deep into the pile of hostplant material when brought into sunlight. Older captive larvae were difficult to catch in the act of feeding as they seemed to spend almost all their time buried in the soil.

On their hostplant in the wild, the young larvae had a habit of dropping suddenly from the leaf when disturbed, making them difficult to capture.

Got the agromyzids ready, they're going in the mail today.

… John van der Linden, 1 June, 2017 - 1:06pm

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