Australia is a moth hotspot and that’s great for the environment and our gardens. Jane visits the Melbourne Museum to find out why.
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Professor Ken Walker, senior curator of entomology at Museums Victoria, says that moths are the unsung heroes of Australian fauna. But the difference between butterflies and moths is a human division, he says: In nature, it doesn't really work.
First theoretical difference is that butterflies fly during the day, but moths fly at night, but there are day-flying moths as well. Another difference is the antennae: In moths, they have very feathery antennae, whereas butterflies have just got a single antenna there. That’s because night-flying moths produce pheromones, so the males need large, feathery antenna to pick up female scent. Day-flying moths don’t rely on scent so much so have butterfly-shaped antennae.
Moths vastly outnumber butterflies: There's about 400 species of butterflies and 11,000 species of moths in Australia. It’s unlikely we’ll discover many new butterflies, but there are possibly another 10,000 or 20,000 moth species that we haven’t yet listed. This is partly because moths are excellent at diversifying - they’re found in pretty much every part of Australia, even the arid centre.
Moths are critical species for our gardens - We often think of butterflies as good while moths are pests, but this isn’t the case; only a small handful of caterpillars give the rest a bad name, and most of these are introduced.
For gardeners, moths do an awful lot of pollination.
For bird lovers, 60% of our birds feed on insects, and a main part of their diet is moths. Many other animals also rely on them for food, so they’re an important part of our ecosystems. However habitat loss and climate change are affecting their life cycles.
Ken shows Jane some of the Museum’s moth collection, including:
Hercules moth (Coscinocera hercules), the biggest moth in the world, found in northern Australia
Cossid moths (family Cossidae), the adult form of witchetty grubs
Hawk moths (family Sphingidae), tremendous pollinators, with elegant markings
Emperor gum moth (Opodiphthera eucalypti), with two large ‘eye’ markings that makes it appear larger to predators
Bogong moth (Agrotis infusa), a small migratory moth that flies from Queensland to the Victorian Alps each summer.
Melbourne Museum’s moth collection is the second largest in Australia, and much of its curation is down to the work of volunteers such as moth experts, Peter Marriott and Marilyn Hewish.
They are gradually working through the thousands of moths, family by family, drawer by drawer, sorting the specimens and checking the correct names.
Jane visits Royal Park with volunteer Cathy Powers, who explains that moths need nectar-producing flowing plants to eat, as well as food plants for their larvae (caterpillars). “A diverse garden is really critical,” Cathy says. Local indigenous plants are best.
Suggested Plants
Bottlebrushes (Melaleuca spp., syn Callistemon spp.)
Melaleucas (Melaleuca spp.)
Blue hibiscus (Alyogyne hueglii)
Grevilleas (Grevillea cv.)
Grasses
Cathy adds that mulch is also important, because some larvae eat the mulch and break it down for you, plus it protects the plants and soil underneath, and some moths lay their eggs in it.
As the sun sets, Peter, Cathy and Marilyn set up a white sheet with a spotlight to attract moths and see what is in the area.
One of the first moths is one that moth expert Marilyn has never seen before.
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