Having decribed here a central question related to the identity of two southwestern Nemoria species, Nemoria caerulescens and Nemoria intensaria we can now report a bit more on the progress of our research. In 2013, we successfully collected male specimens of Nemoria intensaria in the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. The bright, saturated grass green color gave no doubt about the origin of the species name. (Live male moth below).
Though our small series of intensaria were all males, they offered a good look at the form and markings on the adult moths when fresh and provided tissue for DNA extraction. Without any females, our hope to rear larval stages from ova would have to wait. Soon after, Dave Wagner at UConn wrote to say he had collected Nemoria larvae in the Spring Mountains in Nevada. Kyle Canyon and Lee Canyon in the Spring Mountains are two of the well known sites where Nemoria intensaria has been collected, so we expected Wagner’s Nevada Nemoria represented the larval stage of intensaria and the eclosed adult from that larva confirms that identification.
The next step for us was to sequence mtDNA from the Utah Nemoria intensaria to compare it to Nemoria caerulescens from New Mexico and Nemoria festaria from Arizona. Mike Canfield had published a good phylogeny with a significant number of North American species, and our addition of a clear intensaria sequence to his series would allow us to make a more refined placement of Nemoria intensaria among the other US and North American species. We had very good results in our DNA work in 2014 and got quite an interesting result. Rather than being melded in tightly with the Nemoria festaria-albilineata-caerulescens complex, the Utah Nemoria intensaria grouped instead with two California species, Nemoria leptalea and Nemoria glaucomarginaria. A summary of our results can be seen in the research poster just below (presented at the 2014 annual meeting of the Lepidopterists’ Society).
A link to PDF file of Research Poster
We still hope to collect additional Nemoria intensaria individuals, especially live females for ova, to extend the DNA work and rear additional larvae from hatchlings on different host plants. In addition to Henderson Canyon outside Tropic where we collected intensaria males, here we list three other localities where intensaria has been collected. All are lower elevation (c 4800 feet) desert scrub habitat that differs slightly from the habitat where we have collected Nemoria caerulescens.
Places to collect Nemoria intensaria –
in California:
In Utah:
In Nevada:
