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Home » Guide » Arthropods (Arthropoda) » Hexapods (Hexapoda) » Insects (Insecta) » Butterflies and Moths (Lepidoptera) » Twirler Moths and kin (Gelechioidea) » Pterolonchidae » Homaledra » Exclamation Moth - Hodges#1421 (Homaledra heptathalama)
Photo#237570
Palm leaf housemaker - Homaledra heptathalama
Copyright © 2008 Rick Shackleton

Palm leaf housemaker - Homaledra heptathalama
Corkscrew Swamp, Collier County, Florida, USA
November 1, 2008
Not sure again if this is something to post here. At first I thought it was a spider, on closer observation it's a nest of something that is methodically destroying the inner part of the cabbage palm fronds. Large sections of fronds totally eaten from the inside out. I have never seen this before so the amount of damage surprised me.

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Palm leaf housemaker - Homaledra heptathalama Palm leaf housemaker - Homaledra heptathalama
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Contributed by Rick Shackleton on 2 November, 2008 - 10:16am
Last updated 2 November, 2008 - 11:23am

H. sabalella?
Actually, this image may be of H. sabalella. While H. heptathalama is solitary and makes those distinctive 'houses' on the undersides of leaves, H. sabalella lives gregariously in an irregular covering of webbed-together frass pellets on the upperside. I'm not certain from the cropped photo, but that seems to be what's going on here.
… Charley Eiseman, 2 December, 2008 - 6:58pm login or register to post comments

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