Is There a Better Camouflage Than This?

Robbin Thorp saw it first.

Talk about an eagle eye.

Thorp, a native pollinator specialist and emeritus professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, was monitoring the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven on Bee Biology Road, UC Davis, on July 23 when something caught his eye.

The California buckwheat was waving at him.

"While looking closely at the California buckwheat flower heads, I noticed a piece of one waving but there was no wind," recalled Thorp. "I watched a linear group of florets march across to another head.  I tried to get a close-up on a flower head as background, but could not get the focus right."

So he placed the "unusual life form" on his finger to capture a better image.  He captured it all right: a larva covered with buckwheat florets.

Later insect photographer Allan Jones of Davis, a regular visitor at the haven, obtained a spectacular photo of the camouflage.

Thorp identified the "unusual life form" as the larva of an emerald moth Synchlora (see http://bugguide.net/node/view/747823/bgimage).  "The larva pupates with its camouflage still on then turns into a delicate green geometrid adult," he said.  (See http://bugguide.net/node/view/316178/bgimage for the life cycle: caterpillar to moth).

Maybe it was serendipity, but Thorp found the larva during National Moth Week, July 23-29.