Speckled Peter – Agrypnia varia

Caddisflies are a little bit like moths, but without the scales on their wings. They’re the Trichoptera, which means hairy or bristly-winged rather than the scaly wings of the Lepidoptera, the moths and butterflies. And these two groups share an ancient common ancestor dating back to around 300 million years ago, a time before flowering plants when the trees that lived in that era would ultimately become the coal we mine today. It would be another 70 million years before the first dinosaurs appeared. Agrypnia varia, one of several caddisfly drawn to the moth trap There are a mere 14,500 known species of caddisfly, which is an order of magnitude less than the 180,000 species of Lepidoptera. Their larvae are aquatic and the adults landlubbers; only a few moths have aquatic larvae. As regular readers know, we have a garden wildlife pond, it’s possible that this caddisfly was a larvae in that very pond. Anyway, as with the Lepidoptera, caddisflies are sometimes attracted to lights, and…