Here's the suspect.
You can see the feature that stands out right away are the two red areas between the segments nearest the head. They show up even clearer in this next shot.
You can also see there are quite a lot of hairs but it is not covered in hairs like a wooly-bear and they aren't crazy hairs like a tussock moth caterpillar. Here's a few more shots.
I did not get a good shot of the underside but it was mostly black with some small yellow specks on it. After doing my online research I am for sure comfortable calling this to the genus level as a Phyllodesma sp. There are photos out there for Phyllodesma americana, the American Lappet Moth but this seems slightly different. Best I can gather there is some disagreement over various sub-species or full species of Phyllodesma moths. If the experts don't agree then I'm staying out of it. Lappet Moth caterpillar is good enough for me.
The best resource online for identifying these is the online community BugGuide.net. You can post up photos and naturalists from around the world will help you with your ID. Here are some photos of similar or even seemingly identical Phyllodesma caterpillars I was able to find online.
http://bugguide.net/node/view/367529
http://bugguide.net/node/view/328010
http://bugguide.net/node/view/111823
~Kirk
2 comments:
What a great caterpillar! Are you planning to rear it to see what the moth looks like? I have a site that has links to many life cycles of insects, but not that one. www.Buglifecycles.com We only have one lappet moth: Pyllodesma americana. If you raise this one, I'd love to include a link to the life cycle on my site! And if you have other caterpillars to look up, you could try looking there - we do have links to lots of life cycles.
Marcie O'Connor
Thanks Marcie. I let it go. Maybe next time. I didn't realize when I took the photos that it was going to be such an interesting ID.
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