- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The back story: On Jan. 19, 2017, we blogged about research published Jan. 17, 2017 in the journal Zookeys about a newly discovered moth species named Neopalpa donaldtrumpi.
Evolutionary biologist and systematist Vazrick Nazari of Canada discovered the species from a Bohart Museum collection, named the moth, and authored the publication, "Review of Neopalpa Povolný, 1998 with Description of a New Species from California and Baja California, Mexico (Lepidoptera Gelechiidae)."
The tiny moth--wing span of less than a centimeter--was part of a desert insect collection that the Bohart Museum loaned to him.
Nazari sifted and sorted through the Bohart Museum specimens and a brightly colored miniscule moth drew his attention. It differed from similar moths. Yes, a new species! The yellow scales on the tiny moth's head reminded him of then President-Elect Donald Trump's hairstyle. (See images in Zookeys)
So he named it Neopalpa donaldtrumpi.
Class: Insecta
Order: Lepidoptera
Family: Gelechiidae
Genus: Neopalpa
Species: N. donaldtrumpi
Bohart Museum associate/research entomologist Thomas "Tom" Zavortink and colleagues collected the tiny moth with the orange-yellow and brown wings in the Algodones Dunes, bordering Arizona and the Mexican state of Baja California.
"We surveyed the insects of the Algodones Dunes for more than six years with a contract from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management," Kimsey related in January 2017. "It was a really fun/interesting project. We collected nearly 2,000 species of insects from about 200 square mile of 'sand.' Six percent were new to science. The moth was collected in a Malaise trap in one of the washes on the east side of the dunes."
Zavortink, a Bohart Museum associate since 2001, is a former professor and chair of the University of San Francisco Department of Biology. His career also includes research entomologist with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Washington, D.C. He holds a doctorate in zoology from UCLA, where he also received his master's degree.
Having your name associated with a new species is considered an honor. It's a permanent legacy, unlike the names of many streets, schools, other buildings, and parks, which can be subject to removal.
What Snopes Said
Fake images, declared Snopes. "While the species Neopalpa donaldtrumpi is genuine, the photographs shared online claiming to depict the blond-tufted insect" are not.
"The purported moths had tufts of blond hair and displayed pink, black, orange and metallic green colors on their wings, wrote Snopes researcher Madison Dapcevich.
Indeed, the images falsely identified as donaldtrumpi are actually butterflies with a blond tuft that shouldn't be there.
Parody? Perhaps.
But the moth is real. "We have this moth species in the Bohart Museum," said entomologist Jeff Smith, curator of the Bohart Museum's worldwide collection of Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies). "But, someone REALLY does not know their bugs to put a Nymphalid butterfly image as depicting the moth. We see so much of this kind of misinformation where a bug picture is not what is talked about, so often with flies shown on an article about honey bees or crane flies shown as mosquitoes."
"Recently on the TV news they were talking about bats, and showed a quick video clip of 'bats' swirling around over the Yolo Causeway," Smith commented. "Sadly, though, those were starlings out and about in the daytime, not even close to bats. Folks...all it takes is a quick phone call to someone who knows."
A moth is not a butterfly. A butterfly is not a moth. And a moth named N. donaldtrumpi--with "tufts of blond hair" and pink, black, orange and metallic green colors on its wings--simply does not exist.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Just a hoax. A fear-mongering hoax.
A so-called Facebook "public service announcement" on Aug. 21 that warned of a “new deadly spider species” spreading across the United States went viral, but it was all fake news. The images that the South Carolina man posted are of a woodlouse spider, Dysderca crocata, and it's neither new nor deadly to humans.
Unfortunately, many gullible people--probably many who cringe at the very sight of a spider!--believed the hoax. And even more unfortunately, the post went viral.
The South Carolina resident posted the "public service announcement" in all caps:
“THE SPIDER FROM HELL. FIVE PEOPLE HAVE DIED THIS WEEK DUE TO THE BITE OF THIS DEADLY SPIDER .THIS SPIDER WAS FIRST SEEN IN SOUTH CAROLINA IN JULY SINCE THEN IT HAS CAUSED DEATHS IN WEST VIRGINIA ,TENNESSEE AND MISSISSIPPI. ONE BITE FROM THIS SPIDER IS DEADLY. US GOVERNMENT WORKING ON AN ANTI VENOM AT THIS TIME PLEASE MAKE YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS AWARE.”
“This beast, Dysderca crocata, has been in most of North America for decades,” Art Shapiro, distinguished professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis, told us. “That includes California. It occurs mostly around buildings, especially if there is a mulched garden where its primary prey, isopods (rolypolies, pillbugs), live. I've had it at my place for years, but the number of pillbugs went way down during the drought and I haven't seen the spider lately."
“Needless to say, its bite is not lethal," Shapiro pointed out. "It has very large chelicerae and displays them menacingly if annoyed. According to the literature, bites (really rare) cause brief pain and occasionally local dermatitis, nothing more.”
Snopes.com, the fact-checking site, declared it a hoax on Aug. 21, a day later, but not before the damage was done. Today the Entomological Society of America (ESA) tweeted “FACT CHECK: Did a 'New Deadly Spider' Species Kill Several People in the U.S. in the Summer of 2018?” ESA answered the question succinctly: “Spoiler alert: No, it did not.”
No. It. Did. Not.
Snopes wrote: “Invasive and exotic animals have long been common subjects of scarelore, and messages alerting readers to the supposed threat posed by some new or previously unheard-of species often spread like wildfire across message boards, social networks and email inboxes. These posts typically take the form of a 'public service announcement' and are shared in good faith, and without hesitation, by people who sincerely wish to alert their friends and loved ones to an unfamiliar threat. For these reasons, the 'dangerous animal alert' is also a frequent source of misinformation, deliberate scare-mongering, or even downright trolling.”
It's a good idea to question these kinds of Facebook posts (note: where are you, Facebook monitors?)
Wikipedia informs us that "The woodlouse spider, Dysdera crocata, is a species of spider that preys primarily upon woodlice. Other common names refer to variations on the common name of its prey, including woodlouse hunter, sowbug hunter, sowbug killer, pillbug hunter and slater spider."
"Female specimens are 11–15 mm (0.43–0.59 in) long, while males are 9–10 mm (0.35–0.39 in).They have six eyes, a dark-red cephalothorax and legs, and a shiny (sometimes very shiny) yellow-brown abdomen. Notably, they have disproportionately large chelicerae for a spider of this size."
Native to the Mediterranean area, the woodlouse spider is found throughout much of the world, including North and South America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. It's found "under logs, rocks, bricks, and in leaf litter in warm places, often close to woodlice," Wikipedia relates. "They have also been found in houses. They spend the day in a silken retreat made to enclose crevices in, generally, partially decayed wood, but sometimes construct tent-like structures in indents of various large rocks. Woodlouse spiders hunt at night and do not spin webs."
There. You. Have. It.
"Too weird," commented Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at UC Davis, who fields lots of questions about insects and arachnids. "Funny that they picked this spider. Its ferocious looking but tiny and probably couldn't bite you even if it wanted to."
Sadly, Arachnophobia, or the extreme or rational fear of spiders, is very real--unlike the disturbing hoaxes that keep popping up on the Internet.
