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Sticker of Dot-lined angle
Bug card No. 1391 of 4,939

Dot-lined angle

Psamatodes abydata
Name means: “named for the small dots along the lines on its wings”
Eats: PlantsMothsGardens and meadows6 legs

The dot-lined angle is a small moth from the Americas that has become a great island hopper. Tiny dots run along the lines on its wings. Since 1970 it has spread to islands all across the Pacific Ocean.

Lives in
From Argentina to the southern United States, and now on many Pacific islands
Wingspan
2.2 to 2.7 cm (0.87 to 1.1 in)
Top speed
about 12 km/h (7.5 mph)
Flying, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It cannot bite or sting.
What does it eat?
Its caterpillars eat the leaves of shrubs and trees from the pea family, and also soybeans and lychee trees.
For real!Photo of Dot-lined angle
Picture by Tiouraren (Y.-C. Tsai). CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How wide are its wings?

Dot-lined angle wings about 2.7 cm tip to tip (1.1 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)A crayon about 9 cm (3.5 in)
wings as wide as 4 grains of rice in a rowcould fly across a whole football pitch in 32 seconds

How big is Dot-lined angle compared to YOU?

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

It first arrived in Hawaii in 1970 and by 1984 lived on all the main islands.

2

From there it reached Guam, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Okinawa, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

3

In the United States it sometimes wanders north as far as Colorado and Kentucky.

4

In Hawaii its caterpillars were found eating the leaves of the koa tree.

you asked

Most asked questions about Dot-lined angle

?Where does the dot-lined angle come from?

From the Americas, between northern Argentina and the southern United States.

?How big is the dot-lined angle?

Its wings measure 22 to 27 millimetres from tip to tip.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Psamatodes abydata
Group
Moths
Family
Geometridae
Classification
Insecta > Lepidoptera > Geometridae
Lives on
North America, South America, Australia and Oceania, Asia

Where the facts come from

  1. Macaria abydata (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Tiouraren (Y.-C. Tsai). CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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