Festival of Moths - Blacklighting Adventures in Mindo, Ecuador

The setup. You can see one mercury vapor light behind the sheet and another at the left hand side. Behind and towards the left hand edge of the sheet is a fluorescent black light tube.

I am a recent convert to black lighting, and I’ve been craving a real tropical experience with it. Black lighting is a process for attracting nocturnal insects for observation, collecting, or photography. A sheet is suspended so that it hangs down with the lower edge draping onto the ground. Fluorescent black lights or mercury vapor lights are then placed in front of the sheet. Night-flying insects are drawn in and land on the sheet or on the nearby ground. I had a go of it in Costa Rica last winter. Unfortunately, February on the Costa Rican Pacific coast is a very dry time of year, and I attracted little.

My Ecuadorian experience was much more rewarding. A couple of the guys attending the conference are going on to the Amazon afterwards and brought black lighting equipment with them. They borrowed a gasoline-powered generator from our host in Ecuador, and good times ensued.

They set up on two consecutive nights. The first was on a ridge line at about 5,000’ above the town of Mindo. The other was along the Mindo River about 1000’ lower. The habitat in both cases is cloud forest. We got substantially different stuff at both locations. I offer the following festival of moth photos as a small sampling of what we saw.

Night 1: Black Lighting at Sachatamia Lodge. November 14, 2007.

Satyrniidae. This species had about an 8" wingspan.
Added 3/12: Rhescyntis hippodamia

Automeris sp.

The moth with headlights. The bright white spots are not luminescent like a firefly, but they did glow brilliantly under the black light. Could the scales contain a fluorescent compound? Edited 7/20/16 Dysschema marginalis

A tiger moth that mimics clearwing butterflies. The wings were completely transparent. Clearwing butterflies are toxic (the larvae eat nightshades). I don't know whether the moth is also toxic (Müllerian mimicry) or tasty (Batesian mimicry). Hyalurga urioides

This moth confused me. It's a dead ringer for certain kinds of metalmark butterfly, but it's clearly a moth. Some sort of mimicry?
(Edited 7/14  Erateina sp.)

Since we're going on about mimicry, I thought I''d include one photo of a leaf mimic. There were many species of moths on the sheet that looked like leaves.

There were several species of beautiful red moths. I'm pretty sure that most of them were tiger moths (Edited 7/14 Hyperthaema orbicularis).

Another beautiful red and black moth.

A study in 8's
(Edited 7/14 Pantherodes unciaria- a Geometrid)

This moth was tiny. The wingspan was only about 1/2".

Nope, it's not photoshopped. Those really are the colors. I love the tropics.
Heterochroma viridipicta

Blacklighting along Rio Mindo. November 15, 2007. There was much more at the sheet along the river. Unfortunately, the generator ran out of gas fairly early in the evening, so the festivities were cut short.

I'm pretty sure this is in the family Uraniidae (Nope. Sematuridae). Many species in this family are diurnal and look like swallowtail butterflies. This one came to lights.  Homidiana canace


Unfortunately, you can only get a glimpse of the beautiful bright yellow hindwings on this species. Probably a noctuid. Edit: Bathyra sagata

There were numerous species of wasp moths (Cteneuchinae) that came to the sheet on both nights. I managed to use my headlamp and flash to get several examples after the generator ran out of gas.

(Edited 7/14 Loxophlebia nomia)

(Edited 7/14 Sarosa sp.)

(Edited 7/14 Cosmosoma sp.)