Catocala of Alberta

There are not too many species indigenous to Alberta so identification is easy.

The following table divides all North American Catocala species into twenty one different groups. Moths are grouped according to hindwing colour bands (yellow, orange, salmon, red, pink, black or white) and wingspan measurements (small = 35-55mm, medium = 55-75 mm and large = 75mm plus).

Wingspan refers to the distance from wing tip to wing tip when the moths are spread with the inner margin of the forewing perpendicular to the body.

Those found in Alberta are located in their respective groupings.

YELLOWnnmmmmmnmm smallmnmpraeclara medium large

ORANGEmmmmmm blandula hermia briseis californica very rare semirelicta parta

SALMONmmmmmm luciana meskei ultronia junctura unijuga

REDmmmmmmmmmm

mediumPINK mmmmmmmmmmmmmm small medium large mmmconcumbens

BLACKmmmmmmm

WHITE nnmmmmmmmmmm relicta

REDmmmmmmmmmm

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Felix Sperling writes, "I just found a good example of how our University of Alberta Virtual Museum http://www.entomology.ualberta.ca/ can be useful for doing historical searches.

"A colleague gave me an obituary from the London Times for George Salt, who died in England Feb. 17th, 2003, aged 99. George Salt grew up in Calgary and attended the University of Alberta. After time at Harvard, and much travel and research around the world, he ended up as Reader in Animal Ecology at Cambridge University, doing classic research on insect parasites along the way.

"A search of our Virtual Museum site, using "Salt, George" from the list of collectors in the specimen search function, shows that we have databased about 60 specimens, from 39 species, in the University of Alberta Strickland Museum that were collected by George Salt. Most are lepidoptera, including lots of moths, but also one beetle, and most are from Calgary during 1919 to 1922, when he would have been 15-18 years old.

"Check it out! Notice that if you click on the blue "Collector" above the box in the specimen search that allows you to search for collectors, then you will get an alphabetized list of all collectors.

"Felix Sperling

"ps: If any of you have a website link to the Virtual Museum page, could you please change it to the url above! This new internet address will help us to make the Virtual Museum searchable via Google. However, before the Google Crawler can be enticed into indexing our species pages, we need to have as many links as possible to the site above from other web pages. Thanks!"

I visited the Museum's data base and find it excellent for finding info about species flight times and local distributions.

Catocala californica, Waterton National Park, Alberta, courtesy of Gary Anweiler.