Bagworm moth

Adults: Adult bagworms will often go unnoticed in the landscape, especially the female, because she is enclosed in her bag and inside of her pupal casing throughout her life. In many species of bagworms, the adult female’s wings and appendages are greatly reduced to vestigial mouthparts and legs, small eyes, and no antennae or wings. The female remains in a caterpillar-like state, mates, and then becomes essentially an egg-filled sac. The male bagworm emerges as a freely flying moth that is hairy and charcoal black. His membranous wings measure 25 mm in length (FDACS 1983). Neither the male nor the female adult feeds. The female lives a couple of weeks, while the male lives only one to two days (Rhainds et al. 2009).