Melonworm Moth - Diaphania hyalinata

Melonworm Moth - Diaphania hyalinata

(Photo:  Marvin Smith on 11/2/09)

Identification: Very distinctive white to translucent wings with dark brown border ... a tuft of bushy hairlike scales at the tip of the abdomen ... wingspan 2.5-3 cm (around an inch).

Range: Permanent range is Central and South America, the Caribbean, and southern Florida (and maybe South Texas). Moths disperse northward in the eastern U. S. during the summer and have been recorded in New England and the Great Lakes region.

Life cycle: Egg, five instars, pupae and adult. Under optimal conditions, Melonworm Moths can complete a full life cycle in 30 days.

Host plants: Melonworm caterpillars feed on cucurbits. Summer and winter squash are preferred. Cucumber, gerkin, cantaloupe and some pumpkins are secondary choices. Larvae feed mainly on foliage, but may feed on the surface of the fruit, or even burrow into the fruit after eating all the leaves. Crop yield losses to D. hyalinata can be significant.

Comments: The University of Florida says moths are not attracted to light traps, but the moth I photographed was under our porch light.

I found mentions of the "tail feathers" as aids in dispersing pheromones. I believe this is correct, but could not confirm from a reliable source.

Melonworm caterpillar

(Photo:  Alton N. Sparks, Jr., University of Georgia via Forestry Images)

The two white stripes on the Melonworm caterpillar are distinctive, but may be faint in early instars and are lost in the final instar.

Sources and Links:
Forestry Images
BugGuide Species Page
University of Florida

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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Melonworm Moth - Diaphania hyalinata

Garden

Corn and Squash: We kept the corn and squash covered with wire and protected from the rabbits for as longs as we could, but finally had to remove the wire. Some of the corn and especially the squash were really starting to suffer from the confinement. Besides, with the wire in place we couldn't weed or edge the bed and the weeds were about to get out of hand. So, we removed the wire tunnels and set the veggies free. The squash immediately headed for the aisle where it knows it isn't supposed to grow.



Since removing the wire, we've gotten the two corn beds edged, weeded and mulched. The cottontails have eaten a few of the shorter corn plants down at one end, but the damage hasn't been severe yet. Maybe the corn will make it.

Green Beans: Jo planted a row of green beans to see if we could get in a second crop this summer. We knew better than to tempt the rabbits with those. We immediately covered the beans with part of the wire we'd removed from the corn and squash. The beans are sprouting well, and they aren't getting eaten by the rabbits.

Cucumbers: The cucumbers are still producing like crazy -- many, many more cukes than I can get eaten. Jo has suggested we try drying them and burning cucumbers in the wood stove next winter. That's an idea.

Tomatoes: We've been eating a few tomatoes, especially the cherry tomatoes. We're getting close to getting into our major tomato harvest and doing some tomato canning. The tomatoes are suffering some rabbit damage. The cottontails are knocking off a lot of the lower fruits. They nibble on a few of them, but mainly it just seems as if they get under the plants and then jump up and down knocking the tomatoes off.

Garden

Tuesday, 6/26/07

Rain...

Thundershowers around off and on all day. We received a light shower early this morning and some heavier rainfall a little before noon. It looked as if another shower was heading our way during the late afternoon, but it went around. All totaled, we only received .4" of rain. More rain is in our forecast for Wednesday and Thursday, an 80% chance, they say. We'll see.

Garden...

Electric Fence: I used the Weedeater to trim the grass under the electric fence so that it wouldn't touch the bottom wire and ground out the fence. When I trim under the electric fence, I really scalp the vegetation down to bare ground, hoping that it will give up and not grow back. No such luck, though. Were I to accidentally scalp another spot in the yard that badly, the grass/weeds would surely die, but not under that bottom wire. It always grows back.

Corn: The third planting Jo did toward the end of last week is sprouting well. However, the cottontails have been thick in the garden and we figured those tender, young shoots didn't stand much of a chance of not becoming rabbit food. But...... Jo came up with an idea. We had a few welded wire hoops that weren't in use elsewhere. There were two problems with using those hoops on the corn, though. For one thing, we didn't have enough to cover the two corn beds. Also, the mess on those hoops is 2" X 4". A rabbit can get through a hole that big with no problems.

Jo's idea was to use the welded wire tunnels that we had for support and then stretch chicken wire along the length of the beds. We also had 1" mess chicken wire cut to the length of the beds on hand because that's what I use to cover the beds after I get them heavily mulched in the fall. We have to use the chicken wire to keep the armadillos from tilling in the newly applied mulch.

So we installed the welded wire tunnels and rolled the chicken wire out over the top of them. It looks as if this system ought to keep the rabbits out of the corn. If it doesn't work, I'll always think it should have.

This is a temporary installation that will only stay on long enough for the corn to get a little bit of height. Still, I hate having covering the corn with wire. Weeding, mulching, bed edging or even mowing up close to the bed is impossible with the wire in place. If you need to do any of those chores, you need to add about 45 minutes to your time allotted to the project just to get the wire off and then re-installed.

I'll bet the mythical Farmer Brown didn't have so much trouble getting a few ears of sweet corn. Of course, Farmer Brown probably had at least a couple of outside dogs and/or shot every rabbit he saw.

Squash: We had a nice squash vine growing out of the compost pile so I decided leave it and let it grow.



Leaving the squash plant to grow is a mistake. I know I'll regret that decision. The plant will continue growing and growing, taking up more and more space. Soon we won't even be able to get to our compost pile. But this squash plant was so much farther along than what we've recently planted in the garden, I just couldn't bring myself to do away with it.

Tuesday, 6/26/07

Garden

Corn: We've pretty much decided that our problem with the corn is germination because the few corn plants that did come up haven't gotten eaten. I guess that's what we get for using some seed left over from last year. The seed was stored in the deep freeze, but evidently it has still gone bad. We'll have to get some more seed the next time we go into town. It's getting awfully late to be getting corn planted, though. It will be plenty hot and dry by the time it matures.

Squash: That's winter squash coming up behind the corn. The plan was for it to grow between the two rows of corn. The way it's going now, the squash may end up having that bed all to itself.

Green Beans: Jo still hasn't done that second picking. She says that Tuesday is the day for that. We did get the deep freeze defrosted and cleaned out, getting ready for all thos pints of green beans we'll put into it.

Garden