regisrafael's Favorites

Undescribed Scea sp. The little town of Aguas Calientes below Machu Picchu has a Machu Picchu Pueblo sign in 3-foot-high letters that's all lit up at night like the Great White Way. I found a couple of moths fluttering around its base the next morning. This bug led me on a merry chase -- both while photographing it and while trying to ID it. A google image search on "Arctiidae Machu Picchu" (sic; it turns out to be in the Notodontidae) turned up an exact match on the first page: tolweb.org/Scea_erasa/138757. But not so fast! That page, dated 2010 and written by lepidopterists Jim Miller and Andrew Brower, describes Scea erasa, but notes that it is "A rare species ... mostly from the slopes of the Andes in Junín and San Martín provinces .... Very similar to Scea bryki and an undescribed species from Machu Picchu." Scea bryki is even rarer, and likewise from the wrong area. Jim Miller kindly confirmed to me by email that yes, this appears to be his undescribed Scea sp. from Machu Picchu, and no, he hasn't published it yet.