cmeckerman 的最愛

This was a strangely fortunate accident. This small adult male bagworm moth emerged from one of the cases that I had collected a few weeks ago:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/78107299
I don't know which one; I had thrown them all into a single baggy and had assumed that they were all from a previous year and thus unoccupied. This moth probably emerged on/about May 19.
The grid behind the moth is made up of 5 mm squares, so the FW length of this moth is pretty close to 7.5 mm. This moth must have struggled mightly to get out of the baggy because it is lacking 90% of its scales on the wings and body. However, it offers one fortuitous advantage: The wing venation is fairly clearly visible on the FWs in several of my images, including the first two pics here. This allowed me to compare this moth with illustrations in Davis's exhaustive monograph on the family published as a Bulletin of the U.S. National Museum in 1964. The venation of this moth is a good match to the genus Astala as illustrated by Davis (p. 196, Fig. 160) and different from that of Cryptothelea (Fig. 156). I had previously thought all of my small blackish bagworms were Cryptothelea gloverii. With the present example, along with the array of cases shown in the recent observation (which resemble those of Astala in Davis's monograph), and measurements I have made of several of these adults, I can now confidently assign ALL of these to the genus Astala. Two species are widespread in Texas: Astala confederata and A. edwardsi. The first of these is slightly smaller and perhaps more widespread and is a likely candidate for the present moth but details separating the two species require microscopic examination of scales on the wings.
I'm happy to have a proper generic placement for all these small bagworm moths from Salton Drive. To reiterate: The small bags which I documented in the above observation are the ONLY type of bagworm cases that I've seen on the property, and the small blackish adults are the ONLY adults of this general type that I have ever documented at the location. I feel comfortable correlated the two, especially after the emergence of this adult.