Wildlife Spotting

nice spotting!

wow!

I probably have even seen it, but overlooked the markings... Quel malheur ;-)... http://www.cate-sphingidae.org/taxonomy/Rhagastis/lambertoni.html;jsessionid=5080AB1278871047E288D00AAF988B0C http://www.lepbarcoding.org/sphingidae/species.php?region=1&id=41523

No no, you were not that far with Hippotion, and saclavorum was a very good idea. Both are Macroglossini, Choerocampina. The larva of R. lambertoni is a striking creature (see http://photos.wildmadagascar.org/images/pictures/green_caterpillar0040.shtml) Nice to help you.

Oh, Lasse did you see that? We were faaar away with our Hippotion ;-)... I also did a little networking and asked Jean Haxaire, THIS and only Jean Haxaire, famous Lepidopterist and expert! And he obviously just joined Project Noah to give the ID!! Merci beaucoup, Jean, pour ton assistance et bienvenue à Project Noah. Stephen, I talked last November with Florin Feneru, which recommended you to join Project Noah to get help for your moth and see, it worked!! I spent the whole evening with my iPad looking for yours, joined a Sphingidae expert group (I think Jean and Tomas Melchar, yes, the Hippotion-melchari-guy are also involved!!) and screened tons of Sphingidae... But now I am happy, that Florin knows about Project Noah, I spent an exciting evening, Jean joined us and will help us more I am sure and you have your ID!!

This moth is a male of Rhagastis lambertoni (Clark, 1923). It could be confused with Hippotion saclavorum (Bsdv. 1833) and maybe more with Hippotion melichari Haxaire, 2001, but the shape of the wings (more round) and the curved oblique transversal line of the forewings are good characters to separate the species from Hippotion sp. Now the barcoding has recently revealed that R. lambertoni is in fact a complex of several cryptic (and undescribed) species.

You are welcome Stephen

Welcome to Project Noah, Stephen W Very nice first spotting,congrats and thanks for sharing whith us,your amazing photo collection,very good work. We hope you like the site as much we do; there are many features you can explore: We invite you to go to http://www.projectnoah.org/faq where you will find the purpose and “rules” of Project Noah. There is a blog http://blog.projectnoah.org/ where we post articles from spotters with special insight into different organisms. There are also the chats for help with identification, and to comment on your own and others’ spottings. Look at the global and local missions to put your spottings into: http://www.projectnoah.org/missions Enjoy yourself here, see you around!

I checked and checked again and again, but no real success. My losest guess would be Hippotion cf. saclavorum. I will try to get closer...

Was also my guess, but I did not ind a reasonable match.

I think this might be Hippotion sp.