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Photo#467521
Adela thorpella - Adela flammeusella - female

Adela thorpella - Adela flammeusella - Female
Frank Raines County Park, Del Puerto Canyon, Stanislaus County, California, USA
April 10, 2010
Perched on flowers of Plectritis macrocera near ridgetop in mixed Oak Woodland/Chaparral in an area of serpentine substrate.

Initially I narrowed this down to one of three species: Adela thorpella, A. oplerella or A. flammeusella. These species are discussed on pg 40 of Powell & Opler(1).

According to the info there, A. oplerella is known only from a few serpentine locales in the San Francisco Bay area. That fit well and sounded intriguing. But reading further, it turns out A. oplerella has small eyes, and antennae equal or shorter than FW. So that seems to eliminate it here.

Next I looked at the images of A. flammeusella and A. thorpella on BugGuide. All the images of A. flammeusella had three large, distinctive, white spots on each forewing (as does the image from Powell & Opler(1)). The color and markings of the image of A. thorpella seemed to fit my moth better...and that BugGuide post was shot at a relatively nearby locality (Mt. Hamilton).

However, two things prompted me to reconsider A. flammuesella over A. thorpella. First, the host plants for A. flammeusella (namely, species of Orthocarpus/Castilleja) were more likely to be nearby to where I shot the photo than the host plant of A. thorpella (Platystemon californicus)...though the latter might be present as well. Second, in reference to the white wing-spots of A. flammeusella, Powell & Opler state that "both sexes, especially females, have reduced or lack markings in some populations". So the lack of conspicuous forewing spots on my moth wouldn't necessarily eliminate the possibility of A. flammeusella.

In the end though, I decided to go with A. thorpella because Powell & Opler also state that, in contrast to A. flammeusella "...A. thorpella has shorter antennae (2.5 X FW length in males)..." And, using photoshop tools, I measured the antennae length of my moth here to be less than 2 X FW length.

As always, I welcome and appreciate any comments, corrections, or confirmations here.

I tentatively agree - flammeusella
The iridescence of the Adela's can be misleading, but your specimen is so coppery it makes me wonder what it is. A. flammeusella is found at Frank Raines Park. It is neither oplerella nor thorpella. But the Adelidae are not well studied so it could be an undescribed species. But maybe the color is just an artifact of the angle of the light and the photography. If you can, it would be helpful if you can associate the moths with plants. Adelids are often (in fact usually) found in dense, tight colonies closely associated with their plants. If you see one look around for more and chances are you will see them. You are correct, flammeusella appears to oviposit on multiple spp. of Owl's Clovers. Curriously we have never found any sp. of Adelid on any sp. of Indian Paintbrush. There is a taxon, closely related to flammeusella, that appears to oviposit on Diplacus torreyi. It flies later in the year than what we recognize as flammeusella. April 10, is too early for it. Thanks for all your observations. I'm still going through your photos on BugGuide. Please be on the lookout for anything that looks like flammeusella associating with D. torreyi or D. kelloggii.

Moved
Moved from Adela thorpella.

Recently Jerry Powell corrected my earlier (mis)ID of this image as A. thorpella, and I also found his 1969 Synopsis of Nearctic Adelid Moths(1) online. In that synopsis, this moth keyed to a female A. flammeusella...and the details in the discussions therein, comparing A. flammeusella and A. thorpella, greatly clarified issues causing confusion for me between these two taxa.

A key point is that this is a female (from the small eyes), and from Powell(1) females of thorpella have antennae 1.3 or less times the forewing length; whereas in flammeusella they are given as 1.5 or more times the forewing length. I measured the left antenna here to be about 1.7 times the right forewing, and it might be longer considering the foreshortening of perspective in the image. So this keys to flammeusella in Powell(1).

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