Hemileuca Peigleri

Hemileuca peigleri, Peigler's Buck Moth, looks a lot like Hemileuca maia and is often classified as a subspecies of maia. Relatively little scientific information about it has been gathered, but many photos have been taken, especially of the distinctive-looking caterpillars. It lives in Texas, on the Gulf Coast, and eats any of four or five species of small trees in the oak family. Some call them the Texas Buck Moth, the big State's own special breed of, well, stingingworms.

Adult moths may be paler in color than maia.

Photo from Texas Entomology. 

Or they may not. Photo from Farquhar. Most online photos of this species show individuals whose color is pale and/or worn off their wings, but manylook just like maia and a few show melanistic specimens. 

These are among the smaller members of the giant silk moth family. Able to fold in their wings, as many silk moths are not, they like to fold themselves into the shape of very large Meal Moths. The wingspan is only two to three inches, but those orange veins in their wings show their "relationship" to the big Citheronias. 

The silk moths don't eat; they live on energy stored as fat while they were caterpillars. They don't have much time to fly. With luck a silk moth can live about a week after eclosion. Males usually fly close to the ground, and are more likely to be seen and photographed. Females most often fly at the height of small oak trees, ten to twenty feet above the ground. 

Moths' and butterflies' wings are, technically, colorless. Those beautiful colors and patterns we see come from the scales on their wings. Hemileucas tend to lose their scales easily, so their wings become translucent. 

Photo by Dpwalker.

Caterpillars look similar to maia. Their first skins are black; later they molt into skins with various mixes of white with black speckles and black with white speckles, and yellow rosette-shaped bristles on top. A few photos of caterpillars and moths show a reddish overtone; in the caterpillar this means that the lighter skin on the sides looks pink, the bristles orange. Moths can also have a greenish overtone on their wings.. 

Photo by A. Hendrickson. This yellow, white, and black-gray color pattern is not typical of maia and is common for peigleri, but it's probably produced by the individual caterpillar's diet. 

Entomologists warn that peigleri might become extinct if its preferred food plant, the small scrubby native oaks, is eradicated. So far there seems to be a balance between people who think no animal that might be a distinct species should go extinct, and people who think that the sooner stingingworms go extinct, the better.   

Living in their warm climate, the moths eclose in November, even December. 

Photo by Jresasco. I like the way his typical Hemileuca wing band,with the "false eye" spot, serves as camouflage before he can stretch out his wings and fly. All the while, his plumy antennae are already checking for the scent of a female moth. 

Photo by Liz3534. The female is about as eager to get some of those eggs fertilized and laid (in parallel rings around a twig)  as the male is to help. At her back end is a scent gland that pulsates and pumps out a scent that humans don't notice. 

Photo by Courtneyscoggins. The adult moths can mate back to back, as most moths do, but, like other big silk moths, they like to snuggle. 

Photo by Rjnjr.

Eggs can hatch as early as February; caterpillars are active all spring, into June. Hatchlings (and pupae) look like maia at the same life stages.

Graphic from Bob Nuelle. 

Young, small caterpillars like to stay in a cluster, which probably discourages predators, each one touching a sibling on either side if possible. Together they nibble small holes in leaves. Older caterpillars start to want to eat whole leaves, all by themselves, so they separate peaceably. Caterpillars grow through five or six skins, then hide under some dead leaves and wriggle out of the last caterpillar skin. As pupae they can't wiggle very far, so pupae are usually found near to a shed skin, which will still sting if touched. The pupa is smooth and does not sting. Peigleri pupate through the hot summer and crawl back to the surface, looking a bit like furry grubs, to expand their wings and fly.