Small Big and Big Small

After so many years of writing these posts, I take a lot for granted. One example is my casual use of 'micro' and 'macro' in describing moths, as if everyone chancing on this blog understood the difference. In terms of the first term meaning 'small' and the second 'big', you probably do. But it is interesting to remind myself, as well as to tell anyone who hasn't the foggiest about the subject, that the division often doesn't make sense in size terms and - more surprisingly - that it has no absolute scientific basis.

Today's moths prove the first point. My top-of-the-lister is a macro moth, the Short-cloaked whose name derives from the way in which it appears to be neatly and fashionably clothed. (You might argue that it could also be called the Moustached, but the cloak won out). Yet it is a tiny creature as my helpful thumb shows. Much smaller than this pair of micros - Small Magpies - below.

The point about science meanwhile has wider interest, especially during the pandemic when governments are trying to 'follow the science'.  So they should, but as any scientist will tell them and you, science is not a neat set of rules. New discoveries and interpretations are always coming along and changing our understanding - and that is obviously, especially the case with a new disease.

Here are three micros, while we are on the subject, and you can see how different they all are. In general, though, they have more primitive body parts than macro moths. But again, there are many exceptions, including the large Ghost moths which have the quaint distinction of being 'honorary macros'. Their anatomy suggest that they should be classified as micros but their size makes the notion absurd.

I think that the above are Chrysoteuchia culmella with its beady eye, possibly Celypha lacunana, which is common but always muddles me, and the Common Plume, Emmelina monodactyla, but I will get authoritative opinion from the experts on the Upper Thames Moths blog.  Meanwhile, here is another Laura Ashley macro, the Lesser Cream Wave (Update: sorry, I am pretty sure that these are Dwarf Cream Waves because they were very small) and a Burnished Brass with an unusually sparse collection of reflecting and refracting metallic wing scales.