{"id":851,"date":"2008-03-24T23:07:27","date_gmt":"2008-03-25T06:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/2008\/03\/24\/pink-spotted-hawkmoth\/"},"modified":"2008-04-15T22:07:52","modified_gmt":"2008-04-16T05:07:52","slug":"pink-spotted-hawkmoth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/2008\/03\/24\/pink-spotted-hawkmoth\/","title":{"rendered":"Pink-spotted Hawkmoth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.butterfliesandmoths.org\/species?l=3356&#038;chosen_state=04*Arizona\">Pink-spotted Hawkmoths (Agrius cingulata, formerly A. cingulatus)<\/a> are found in the southwestern U.S., Mexico, Central America, and throughout much of South America. However, Pink-spotted Hawkmoths are very strong fliers, and strays can be found great distances from their normal range. I captured this Pink-spotted Hawkmoth below inside my Tucson, Arizona house one evening in October of 2007. After posing nicely for some photographs, it was released back out into the night.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/images\/firefly\/2008\/March\/Agrius-cingulata.jpg\" alt=\"Pink-spotted Hawkmoth (Agrius cingulata, formerly A. cingulatus)\" title=\"Pink-spotted Hawkmoth (Agrius cingulata, formerly A. cingulatus)\" width=\"480\" height=\"387\" class=\"post-photo\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Pink-spotted Hawkmoths are large, plump-bodied moths with an up to 4 3\/4 inch (12 cm) wingspan, and they can be identified by the alternating black and bright pink bands on the sides of their abdomen. Pink-spotted Hawkmoths have furry legs, mottled brown and gray forewings, black-banded hindwings with bright pink at the base, and large, dark eyes.<\/p>\n<p>With their unusually large eyes, the nocturnal Pink-spotted Hawkmoths are easily able to find and visit nectar-filled, night-blooming flowers. Moth-pollinated flowers are usually white so that they can better be seen at night, fragrant to attract moths by scent, and tubular in shape to hold the sweet nectar supply.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/images\/firefly\/2008\/March\/Mirabilis-longiflora-2.jpg\" alt=\"Night-blooming Sweet Four O'Clock (Mirabilis longiflora) flowers\" title=\"Night-blooming Sweet Four O'Clock (Mirabilis longiflora) flowers\" width=\"480\" height=\"342\" class=\"post-photo\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A number of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fireflyforest.com\/flowers\/1642\/mirabilis-longiflora-sweet-four-oclock\/\">Sweet Four O&#8217;Clocks (Mirabilis longiflora)<\/a> were blooming in my yard during that October when I found the Pink-spotted Hawkmoth. The Sweet Four O&#8217;Clock plants later produced a good crop of seeds, so some night creature, perhaps it was the Pink-spotted Hawkmoth, managed to pollinate these night-blooming flowers despite their amazingly long floral tubes. Sweet Four O&#8217;Clocks are sweetly fragrant and have all of the characteristics of a moth-pollinated flower, but it would take a large moth like a Hawkmoth or a Sphinx Moth (Family Sphingidae) to pollinate them.<\/p>\n<p>Both the nectar-feeding adult Pink-spotted Hawkmoths and their leaf-munching caterpillars are attracted to plants in the Morning-glory Family (Convolvulaceae), especially fragrant, night-blooming, white <a href=\"http:\/\/plants.usda.gov\/java\/profile?symbol=IPAL\">Moonflowers (Ipomoea alba)<\/a>. The caterpillars will also feed on some plants in the Potato Family (Solanaceae) like Jimsonweed (<em>Datura<\/em> spp.) despite their toxicity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pink-spotted Hawkmoths (Agrius cingulata, formerly A. cingulatus) are found in the southwestern U.S., Mexico, Central America, and throughout much of South America. However, Pink-spotted Hawkmoths are very strong fliers, and strays can be found great distances from their normal range. I captured this Pink-spotted Hawkmoth below inside my Tucson, Arizona house one evening in October&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/2008\/03\/24\/pink-spotted-hawkmoth\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More &rarr; <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arizona-butterflies-and-moths","category-arizona-invertebrates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}