Meet the fruit-piercing moths!

Most moths feed on flower nectar and thus act as pollinators. Others live for a few hours or days and accumulate fat in the larval stage, so that the adults barely eat, drinking only water. However, several groups of the family Erebidae (ex-Noctuidae latu sensu + Arctiidae) are frugivorous, feeding on ripe fruits that are beginning to decompose. They include the well-known and popular genus Catocala from the northern temperate region, which can be attracted by brushing fruit puree on tree bark and trunks.

Some genera of the Calpinae subfamily have specialized in piercing the skin of intact fruits with their proboscis or spiritrompa, a typical mouthpart of 99% of adult Lepidoptera, which in this case has a pointed and barbed tip, allowing the moth to pierce the skin of the fruit and sip its juice, with some of them being considered pests of citrus fruit orchards. In our region, the colorful genus Eudocima occurs, with a pantropical distribution (species in all tropical regions), exemplified by the individual seen here on a fallen fruit.

Finally, as a matter of ‘curiosity’, Nature went a little further and the modifications of the moth proboscis that facilitated it to pierce intact fruits, with further 'improvements' allowed the appearance of some hematophagous species in Southeast Asia capable of piercing the skin of mammals to feed on the blood of large animals, including local cattle. These are the ‘vampire’ moths of the genus Calyptra. The typical thing in this Asian genus is to feed on the tear secretion of these animals, but half a dozen species have specialized in hematophagy, just like mosquitoes.

Eudocima sp. (© Micaela Locke).

Data: 22/06/21