Moths of Outback Australia

Recently when I traveled through Australias outback wetlands, each night I would leave one light on as it got dark for a few hours and take photos of the insects that were drawn to to the light. Below are a few of them. They are taken with a canon G12, if you play around with the settings, really fast exposure, and dim the flash to its lowest light settings many little cameras with macro settings can take this type of photos. I havnt identified any if them yet, there are many, many more familes of moths than butterflies so it makes it much harder.
There are so many different species of moths that we really dont know the full lifecycle of many of them. One intersting thing is that some caterpillars eat leaf litter and there may be so many of the species that do this that they keep the leaf litter down to a minimum. However it is thought that the times we do some of our control burns might be the time when these caterpillars are active so we kill them off if we keep burning off the same areas every year. We may be making it so that leaf litter builds up more than it would if we had left it alone. Control burns have always been carried out in this country by aboriginal people, but we dont necessarily do it at the same times as they use to. It is for reasons like this that we need to know as much as we can about the creatures around us.

Aside from that I love moths, they have so many differnt patterns and shapes, there are some that are much brighter than these ones here.
Many of them are pollinators that visit white flowers, and those that have a strong smell at night. Most are active at night but there are day flying moths as well.

Diamantina NP, Qld.

Coopers Creek, Windora, Qld

Mt Isa, Qld.

Elsey NP, NT.

Walkers Creek, Karumba, Qld.

Walkers Creek, Karumba, Qld.

Mt Isa, Qld.

Coopers Creek, Windora, Qld

Coopers Creek, Windora, Qld.

Sturt NP, NSW. I often see this moth during daylight visiting flowers. Its rear wings(hidden) are a beautiful lilac blue. I have seen it many places in Australia. Its about 2cm long, an inch.

Elsey NP, NT.

Innamincka, SA. I love the shape of the wings of this species. I would love to know why they fold like that.

The little green moth was at Diamantina NP, Qld.

Walkers Creek, Karumba, Qld. Family Arctiidae. This is a tiger moth. the bright colourings are warnings of its poisonous nature. It is thought to deter bats.

Plume moth, Mt Isa, Qld. This moth is max 2 cm wide. Their wings are very feather like....hence the name.

If you would like to find out more about the moths that eat leaf litter you can read about it in a guide to moths of asutralia
Paul Zborowski And Ted Edwards
Publisher: CSIRO Publishing Released: 18 May 2007 ISBN: 9780643099043