Discovery of rare moth ‘something spectacular’
Maurice Bottos wasn’t even looking for the moth that he would soon call the highlight of his career.
Thursday night, the retired high school science teacher recorded the first confirmed appearance of the sad underwing moth, or Catocala maestosa, in Canada. He made the discovery at Windsor’s Black Oak Heritage Park.
“I was so excited,” Bottos said. “I was going to say speechless, but I kept just saying ‘Oh my God, oh my God.’ Because, I guess when you have studied these long enough, you know your specimens, you know your species. I came across something that I knew was different, but I didn’t know what it was.”
Bottos knew the moth was an underwing, and quickly identified it as a Catocala maestosa.
“I’ve never seen this one in my life,” the veteran of mothing said.
“It’s very uncommon in the southern (United) States.
“It’s super rare in the north. And of course, it’s well outside its range right now.
“To see it was something spectacular.”
Bottos confirmed his find with David Beadle, author of the Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Northeastern North America.
But the first sad underwing Bottos found, a male, wasn’t alone. He went out the following night and found a second, this one a female.
“And that means, now we have a population,” Bottos said.
“Which is really, really exciting. It isn’t just an errant moth that just flew up this way, that lost its way and flew up this way.
“We’ve got a male and a female. We have a population here. It might be a small population, but it’s a population found in Canada. So for etymologists, this is pretty exciting ... It’s something that you dream you’d ever find.”
Underwings are unique among moths because they aren’t necessarily attracted to light. Entomologists use “sugar” to bait the species, Bottos explained.
“You get a couple rotten bananas, you get a little bit of brown sugar and you get a little bit of stale beer,” he said.
“The sugar is, of course, their food source. The rotten banana has an odour they can pick up. The stale beer kind of gets them a little bit drunk, and gets them so that they sit there a little bit longer.”
Once the moths are attracted to the sugar concoction, they can be caught, recorded or photographed.
Bottos captured the female sad underwing he found. It’s temporarily residing in a glass jar in his fridge, where the cooler temperature will keep it calm.
Global warming might be the cause of typically southern species coming farther north, Bottos said.
“We think what’s happening now is that global warming has hit, and what’s happening is that some of these southern species, their range is being extended,” he said.
“So we suspect — let’s find out, it’s just a theory — that if we see more new species coming into Canada, then we know that it’s probably, most likely, the reason.”
Essex County’s diversity of forests, including the Carolinian forest, means the region has a rich species list, said Bottos, a Hamilton native now living in Lakeshore.
“With Catocalas, there’s 37 different species that have been found here. That’s the highest anywhere in Canada,” he said.
“That’s very high for a lot of spots, even in the United States.”
The ever-changing nature of etymology is part of what’s kept Bottos hooked on moths, which he says are ignored and often misunderstood in comparison to the more popular butterflies.
“I like talking about moths because, unfortunately, butterflies get all the headlines,” Bottos said.
“You go to a store, you’re going to find plates, you’re going to find napkins, you’re going to find tablecloths with butterflies on them. Do you ever find moths? No.”
A lifelong passion for moths ramped into high gear nearly two decades ago, when Bottos’s children were older and he was available to look for moths after dark.
Now that he’s retired from teaching, he hopes to delve into mothing even more.
“I always was interested in bugs and had a collection, and travelled to different spots of the world, looking for and studying bugs,” he said. His mothing adventures have taken him to 42 countries around the globe.
“I really got into moths. I was about eight years old when I saw my first underwing. And I was fascinated by it.”
We’ve got a male and a female. We have a population here. It might be a small population, but it’s a population found in Canada.