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.
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