Unknown caterpillar - now ID'd as Dysschema howardi (in tribe Pericopini) - Dysschema howardi

rmilner,

Please contact us by email (see our contributor page here) regarding permission to display on Plates at Moth Photographers Group photographs of moths and larvae that you have posted here at BugGuide. You'll have to translate our address into a real email one, sorry. Thanks, J&J.

… john and jane balaban, 10 November, 2011 - 6:33pm

Moved

Moved from Tiger Moths.

… john and jane balaban, 4 November, 2006 - 6:50pm

positive ID

Thanks to the folks at NMSU's Arthropod Museum, I now know that this is a Dysschema howardi, New Mexico's largest tiger moth. So the guess at Estigmene was fairly close; it is also in the Arctiidae.

… rmilner, 28 April, 2006 - 3:28pm

Our first impression was of

Harrisinia in the Zygaenidae, but we don't know the western species and can't find many images online. Here is an image of our eastern species, and one for one of the western species. We'll keep thinking :)

… john and jane balaban, 18 April, 2006 - 10:12am

Hmmm ...

Well, the Harrisina ones have stripes, but they're much smaller and have very inconspicuous hair-sprouting blobs (if any). Their habitat is also quite different, even the western species: they live in groups eating leaves in large quantity. We only saw this one, and there wasn't a grape leaf (or any other kind of leaf worthy of the name) anywhere nearby. Of course it might have recently arrived there by some freak manner, e.g. hitchhiking or falling from the top of the canyon, rather than being native to the vicinity.

In addition to http://bugguide.net/node/view/27836, it bears a vague resemblance to a couple of species of Estigmene (e.g. http://nitro.biosci.arizona.edu/zeeb/butterflies/figs/moth_larvae/Arctiid/E_acrea-l.jpg), although the patterns of coloration and tufts are not the same and those eat leaves too.

It's a cute little puzzler. :-) I'll keep hunting too.

… rmilner, 18 April, 2006 - 1:26pm