Species Smerinthus cerisyi - One-eyed Sphinx - Hodges#7822

7822

Eyed Sphinx

Willow Sphinx

Cerisy's Sphinx

Cerisy's Eyed Hawk Moth

uncommon

wingspan 62-90 mm

Adult: FW a cryptic mix of pale gray and dark brown with cross vein at end of discal cell; other veins toward outer margin usually outlined in paler brown. HW eyespot blue, usually with black bull's eye in middle, and thick black outer ring; small to large amount of pink shading surrounding eyespot.

Larva: body pale bluish-green or yellowish-green with granular skin, pale lateral diagonal lines, faint red spiracular circles, and very pale longitudinal lines running from the head to a more pronounced anal diagonal line; anal horn red in first instar, becoming blue in later instars; head green, bounded dorsally by pale yellow inverted V

Formerly defined as "coast to coast in northern United States, plus all of Canada (including the arctic) and into Alaska, south in the west to California and across to western Texas, south in the east to Tennessee and Missouri".

Now the populations in California, Washington, Oregon, and most of British Columbia have been split off as a separate species, Smerinthus ophthalmica. Both S. ophthalmica and S. cerisyi occur together in Alberta and portions of the interior mountain West. Where they occur together, the species are nearly impossible to separate.

Update - The Rocky Mountains population is recognized as Smerinthus astarte Strecker, 1885, formerly a synonym of Smerinthus cerisyi, in Kitching et al. (2018).

river margins and low ground where food plants grow

adults fly from May to July or August

larvae feed on leaves of pear, plum, poplar, willow

adults do not feed

one generation per year; overwinters as a pupa; smooth, shiny oval eggs are laid singly or in pairs from June to August

Mated pair; eggs; early instar larva; larva; larvae; adult

Mating: female extends scent gland from posterior of abdomen to lure night-flying males; male aligns body at 180 degrees from female during pairing, which continues until the following evening

Twin-spotted Sphinx (S. jamaicensis) hindwing has blue eyespot divided by black bar

Blinded Sphinx (Paonias excaecatus) hindwing has no black center in blue eyespot - hence "blinded" - and has 6-8 toothlike lobes on outer margin of forewing

Kitching, I., R. Rougerie, A. Zwick, C. Hamilton, R. St Laurent, S. Naumann, L. Ballesteros Mejia, A. Kawahara, 2018. A global checklist of the Bombycoidea (Insecta: Lepidoptera). Biodiversity Data Journal, 6: e22236.