The long-toothed dart moth is the 11,000th species to be added to National Geographic’s Photo Ark, a project that aims to document every species living in zoos and wildlife sanctuaries around the world. The moth is a type of cutworm, moths that look almost the same, so much that it’s hard for scientists to tell them apart. This is one of the reasons why the dart moth hasn’t been studied that much:
When Sartore and his team captured the long-toothed dart moth along New Mexico’s Pecos River in September 2020, they sent a photo of the mysterious species to Bob Biagi, an editor at the species-identification website BugGuide. His response: “We have been waiting for your image for at least 130 years.”
Cutworm moths are so named because their caterpillars emerge from the soil at night and snip the stems off plants, usually seedlings, toppling them over. Some species, such as the army cutworm, are considered agricultural pests, but most aren’t harmful to crops, Kawahara says.
Cutworm moths also help feed bats (they’re particularly “meaty,” Kawahara says) and pollinate night-blooming flowers. Moths’ role as pollinators is often overshadowed in the public eye by butterflies and bees, he says.
Earth is home to about 160,000 known species of moths and butterflies, but perhaps another 200,000 remain unidentified. “There are so many insects that we don’t know much about,” says Scott Bundy, a professor of entomology at New Mexico State University.
Image via National Geographic