Mysterious moth rediscovered
The Frosted Phoenix is legendary among New Zealand bug experts. Last seen 65 years ago, the distinctive moth was feared to be extinct – until an unexpected discovery on a hotel balcony cracked the case wide open, proving the potential of citizen science and nature’s capacity to surprise us.
On a warm, drizzly night in March, a Swedish birdwatching group ventured into a dark forest to find an elusive creature. After two weeks roaming the country looking at rare native birds, they arrived on Stewart Island/Rakiura, hoping to see a kiwi in its natural habitat. After dinner at the South Sea Hotel in Oban, where they were staying, tour leader Pav Johnsson had a thought.
He grabbed a UV light from his bag and dangled it over a couch on the second-floor balcony. It was perfect weather for moth-spotting.
Johnsson is a school teacher on the
“It is by far the most breathtaking, important and greatest find I’ve ever made or will make in the future.”
Swedish visitor Pav Johnsson
small island of Öland, but also a trained biologist with a passion for insects – particularly moths and butterflies. When the opportunity arises, he takes photos of critters and plants, and uploads them to iNaturalist, a website for reporting biodiversity observations.
When the group returned to the hotel after midnight, they were exhausted but buoyant. They had seen kiwi. Before going to bed, Johnsson remembered the UV light on the balcony and saw moths fluttering around it.
He spotted a lone moth hiding beneath a chair on the balcony. It was “quite large and robust”, Johnsson recalled to The Press, with dark streaks on its wings, framed with glittering silver. He took two quick photos on his phone camera and thought nothing more of it.
Upon returning to Sweden, he sorted through his photos trying to classify the wildlife he’d seen. The moth under the chair proved difficult. He couldn’t identify it, even with the help of an AI tool.
He uploaded the photo to iNaturalist, marking it as unknown. A user made a suggestion in the comments: Could this be a species some believed was extinct?
One of New Zealand’s pre-eminent moth experts, Dr Robert Hoare, received a phone call from a friend about the post. He left a comment. “No other living soul has seen this moth,” he wrote. Truly astonishing!”
That’s when it sank in for Johansson. He had accidentally made a major scientific discovery.
“My legs were almost shaking,” he said. “I did not realise that I had found the Holy Grail of New Zealand moths.”
Titanomis
The moth under the chair was a Titanomis sisyrota, better known as the Frosted Phoenix. Johnsson is the only living person known to have seen one, let alone captured it on camera.
It joins a short list of New Zealand species once thought extinct only to be rediscovered many decades later. In 2004, research students found a population of Canterbury knobbled weevils in Burkes Pass – 82 years after one was last seen.
The takahē was rediscovered in 1948, having been presumed extinct 50 years earlier.
For New Zealand’s small community of moth experts, it is an unusual end to a decades-long search. Rather than a professional entomologist finding it in the wilderness, a tourist stumbled across one on a hotel balcony.
“There are about four or five of us who have been here for at least 25 years looking for moths, with a strong awareness of Titanomis, and have never seen it,” Hoare told The Press.
“Some people have been out thousands of times in various places ... It really is incredible.”
He was “absolutely stunned” when he saw the photo. The resemblance was unmistakeable: The moth is relatively large, with a distinctive ash-like pattern on its wings.
“I thought hard about it when I first saw the photograph, but there really is no doubt.”
Hoare is a senior researcher at Manaaki Whenua/Landcare Research, and the de facto global expert on Titanomis . In a 2001 research paper for the Department of Conservation (DOC), he described it as “New Zealand’s most enigmatic moth” – a title earned for its extreme rarity and uncertain origin.
Only 10 specimens have been found, spanning Southland to Waikato. The last was in 1959, attached to a floodlight on a hydroelectric dam; a worker stored it in a tobacco tin. Te Papa holds another specimen.
The sporadic sightings have added to the intrigue.
Small moths can go unreported for many years, but Titanomis is large, and unlikely to be missed by an observant entomologist. Dr John Dugdale, a leading entomologist who died in 2020, had been looking for moths since the 1950s and had never seen one.
It has left many gaps in the scientific record. What are its closest relatives? Is it endemic to New Zealand? The only certainty, Hoare concluded in 2001, was that Titanomis is occasionally attracted to light.
Its recent rediscovery won’t answer those questions. But it does provide an important clue. The light Johnsson used was an LED that only became commercially available in recent years. Moths are typically attracted to UV light, but this device had several other wavelengths that might have attracted Titanomis.
“I think the most important factor is we probably haven’t been using the right techniques to find it,” Hoare said.
In 2001, Hoare was hopeful Titanomis was still out there. He proposed a public awareness campaign, starting by giving it a compelling common name: The Frosted Phoenix. “I came up with ‘phoenix’ because it burns into ashes and then rises again, and the moth has a slightly ash like appearance. But more in terms of its history, it keeps on disappearing and then, all of a sudden, it rises again,” he said. “I never completely gave up hope.”
A lucky idiot
The rediscovery of Titanomis shows the potential of a growing source of knowledge: Citizen scientists.
New Zealand has few professional entomologists, who face the difficult task of finding small, elusive insects in a vast and diverse landscape. It means many insect species are chronically understudied.
That is changing with websites such as iNaturalist, where amateur nature fans can report their own sightings.
“What’s happened noticeably over the last few years is there have been a lot more people looking for moths, and all sorts of things have turned up,” Hoare said.
“Some things that I thought were really, really rare have turned out to be not incredibly rare. There’s hope that we might get some more information, because there’s so many more people out there.”
For one citizen scientist, the rediscovery of the Frosted Phoenix has been surreal.
Of all the outcomes of his birdwatching trip to New Zealand, Johnsson did not expect to accidentally make a sizeable contribution to entomology, and become the only living person known to have a seen the Frosted Phoenix.
“It is by far the most breathtaking, important, and greatest find I’ve ever made or will make in the future,” he said. “It was pure luck, and I am just so humbled and grateful to be part of bringing this fascinating insect back from the dead, in a way.”
He has thought about how unlikely it all was. He did not use the UV light every night; the next day, it was raining, and there were no moths. He has no knowledge of New Zealand’s moth fauna. He had been asked to lead the tour at short notice.
And yet, through his actions, the Frosted Phoenix has risen again.
“I was just some lucky idiot in the right spot at the right time.”