16-year-old aspiring entomologist finds rare moth in her N.B. neighbourhood

A 16-year-old aspiring entomologist from the Saint Andrews area found three rare cecropia moths in her neighbourhood.

After one of them laid eggs, Jannique Mulder-Slater of Bocabec decided to raise them in order to increase the population in the area. 

Mulder-Slater's love for bugs started from an early age. 

"From the time I was walking around and going outside, I would always pick up every creature I could find and I would look at their little faces," said Mulder-Slater.

One of her favourite bugs is the cecropia moth, a species that's part of a big family of moths called the silkworms. The cecropia moth is one of the largest moths in North America and is considered rare in New Brunswick. 

Mulder-Slater said she never expected to find a cecropia moth, so when she saw one featured in her neighbour's Facebook post, she didn't hesitate to go and see it in person.

"We had just opened Facebook at the right time to see it," she said 

Mulder-Slater said she decided to take the moth, which she had identified as a female, home to provide her a safe place to stay during the night. 

She placed the moth in a butterfly cage in her garden, with the door pinned open to give her the opportunity to leave if she chose to. 

The moth, however, chose to stay six more days — even attracting two male moths to mate with. 

For Mulder-Slater, finding the first moth "was magical," so she became even more excited when she found the two other cecropian moths around her porch. 

"It just got better and better. It changed my life," she said. 

According to University of New Brunswick biologist Stephen Heard, one of the most interesting facts about the cecropian moths is their ability to find their mates by using pheromones. 

Heard said the female will emit a plume of pheromones that can be detected by a male cecropia moth from a distance of one kilometre or more. 

"One trick people often use is to keep the female in a little cage, on their back deck, on their yard, or something like that, and then often in the morning they will find a bunch of males inside the cage," he said. 

Heard believes this is what probably prompted the two male moths to come to Mulder-Slater's home. But he said there's no data to determine if any specific trends brought the moths to the province in the first place. 

He said there's been a clear trend of various species moving northward as our climate warms, and he wouldn't be "shocked" if these moths came to the province for that reason. 

The moths have since left Mulder-Slater's home and she's not sure where they went. Their brief visit, however, has further confirmed her goal of becoming an entomologist. 

She's also trying to raise some of the eggs left behind by the female moth, looking forward to populating her neighbourhood "with lots of cecropia moth babies."