Identification, Images, & Information
For Insects, Spiders & Their Kin
For the United States & Canada
Photo#633456
Apantesis Tiger Moth - Apantesis nais

Apantesis Tiger Moth - Apantesis nais
Iowa City, Johnson County, Iowa, USA
April 24, 2012
Size: 2.5 cm
Resembles Banded Tiger Moth, but is Iowa too far north? If so this would have to be Harnessed Tiger Moth I suppose.

Moved
Moved from Banded Tiger Moth.
I ran this one by Chris on Facebook. He said "I don't remember this one in particular, the message thread says I called it either nais or vittata, but I may have missed the fact that it was from Iowa so that is definitely too far north for vittata. carlotta doesn't work either, so I'd call this nais."

 
Sounds good
That one is my fault, as I don't believe I gave Chris the location of this one when verifying. Just a quick "does this look right for" email. Although, there are confirmed records for vittata in Iowa, unless they are all based on older misidentifications.

Moved
Moved from Apantesis.

Moved
Moved from Banded Tiger Moth.

This is probably nais or phalerata. Females of all these species have reduced forewing markings, and vittata cannot be reliably identified from a photo unless it is seen outside the range of any similar species.

 
Apantesis
I actually ran this one (and many others from 2011/2012) by Chris Schmidt. From the email exchange on this one, it came down to nais or vittata. Given the more elongate FW and being still within the outermost range of vittata, that was the "most probable" ID agreed upon. I'll go ahead and move it back rather than leave it languishing in perpetual genus status.

 
Sounds good
There were so many misidentified and questionably identified photos on all the species pages for this group that a few of us decided it was time for a "purge" to clear up some of the confusion about the species, so we moved a lot of these back to the genus page. If Chris ID'd this one, then it makes sense to keep it on the species page though. Thanks! :)

 
No worries
There was only one other of your moves that I moved elsewhere - from my records it had been agreed to be most likely carlotta.

This group of Apantesis can definitely be a headache. Years ago when I was pulling tails on these, hoping I could nail down some local southeastern populations, I was finding it difficult to separate some of them even by genitalia due to variation/aberration in the aedeagus. I shared the frustration here and was suggesting a combo page for the uncertains at that time, but later realized that would basically be redundant to the genus page. So unfortunately, a lot of them are probably best left in genus unless there's enough to give a good 'probable' ID (which is another can of worms on BG - probable vs. precise IDs). I appreciate you tackling this group though.

Moved
Moved from ID Request.