My nerdery does not stop for holidays. While at my moms for thanksgiving, I spotted a couple of my invertebrate friends.

The silverfish (Thysanura) pictured above wasn’t in a rush to go anywhere. Silverfish are a common household dweller. There is a very nice little post about silverfish over at David Nelson’s Photoblog. Silverfish are estimated to have existed for 300 million years, dating back to the Paleozoic Era.

On to the “mothy” weather.

If you were to take a drive at night out here on Cape Cod this time of year, you might mistake the small flutterings in the beams from your headlights as flurries from a light snowfall. You’d be wrong; they are winter moths (Operophtera brumata). Though in all honesty, they really are as thick as a light snowfall to drive through. We have Europe to thank for these little buggers, since they are an invasive pest from that country.

Despite being major defoliators of oak, maple, ash, and crabapple, winter moths are kind of cool in their own right. The adults emerge from their pupal cases in the soil in late Nov. and are active until about Jan. Females are actually wingless and don’t fly. The hairy/fringed appearance on the wings of the males is due to elongated scales. Females usually make their way up the base of trees and release a sex pheromone that attracts many-a-male. Once she has mated, the female lays her eggs in the crevices on the bark of the tree. The larvae hatch around spring and go to town munching away on the buds of the tree. The larvae participate in a behavior called “ballooning”, wherein they become air buoyant by hanging from strands of silk and dropping to other buds/plants using that silk strand. You might most easily recognize the larvae in your backyard if I used the term “inchworm” to describe them. The winter moth is in the family of inchworms (Geometridae…get it, geometrid, inchworm?). Then, when the larvae have had enough to eat, they drop to the ground and burrow into the soil for pupation around June. They stay there until Nov. and the whole cycle starts all over again.

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