Twenty-five moth species at a late-June blacklight

Over 25 moth species appeared at a late-June blacklight in the gorge — North American Luna Moth, Giant Leopard Moth, Sycamore Tussock Moth, and Painted Lichen Moth among them. The larvae of most of these species are specialists, feeding on native trees — sugar maples, oaks, sycamores — and that diversity of host plants reflects a canopy still intact and diverse.

This glacial gorge sits as a forest refugium in a farmed landscape, and the moths are a measure of what it still holds. The presence of 25 species on a single night signals that the forest structure here — the variety of mature trees, the undisturbed understory — remains intact enough to support a full community of native lepidopterans.