Based out of Chester County, PA, United States

mjacobs@theartofecology.com 570.497.9141

The Art of Ecology

Building visual connections between people and nature.

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Posted on November 1, 2021 by

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Morphology is the study of WHY an organism looks the way it does (how does form meet function). The fact that this flower is open, is saturated with pigment, and has obvious reproductive structures, tells me that it relies on a diurnal animal (probably a type of bee or butterfly) to pollinate it!

Orchids are often epiphytic, meaning that they like to utilize other plants as growing substrates (like growing off of trees). This makes them perfect candidates for mounting and having floating in your home!

While this particular individual Western Sheep moth is rather vibrant, not all of them are. This is a subspecies, found only in northern California and southern Oregon. Subspecies often can breed within its species, however it has genetic traits unique to individuals found within a different geographical range or requires different ecosystems. Other sheep moths lack the pink and orange coloration and are only yellow and black! Of course, I wanted to illustrate the more colorful subspecies.

This Cinnabar Moth can serve as a cautionary tale of how introducing a species in order to manage another can go awry. This moth is not native, but was introduced in order to control ragwort species in western North America. The moth started enjoying more plants than just the ragwort, and started decimating native plants too. I think that this is such a beautiful insect, even if it has become an invasive one in my country.

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