Hawkmoths of  Brazil  by Alan Martin

Home Keys Photo gallery Pinned specimens General Information Appendices

In December 2019 Haxaire & Mielke published a revised checklist of the sphingidae (hawkmoths) of Brazil in the European Entomologist journal, and this included 198 confirmed species with 3 awaiting confirmation and a further 5 which they list as likely to be present. This website has now been updated to include the 201 species (the confirmed plus awaiting confirmation) with simple keys that highlight the differences between similar species, supported by photographs (where available) of live specimens and photographs of museum specimens. The general information which includes distributions has also been updated.


At least partly due to the lack of good identification guides, the study of hawkmoths in the neotropics has been mostly confined to professional lepidopterists who have access to museum or private collections. However in 2011 ‘A Guide to the Hawkmoths of the Serra dos Orgaos’ was published by Alan Martin, Alexandre Soares and Jorge Bizarro and this book formed the original basis on which this website was developed. The book owes much to the work of the late Henry Pearson (1911-2004), an English amateur naturalist who lived and worked in Rio from 1943, and who donated his extensive collection and data to the National Museum (UFRJ). The majority of the photographs of pinned specimens were taken at this museum, but unfortunately the entire collection was lost in the terrible fire of September 2018 along with all the other lepidoptera specimens.


Since the book was published there have been a number of taxonomic changes and new species described, and of course a few errors have been found, all of which are corrected on this website. The website is also much more ambitious than the book, covering all the species and their subspecies known to occur in Brazil, and in order to achieve this it includes photographs of pinned specimens taken  at the London Natural History Museum and other photographs of live specimens kindly provided by a number of individuals.


Since 2004 regular moth recording at the Reserva Ecologica de Guapiacu (REGUA), which is located in the heart of the Serra dos Orgaos near the town of Cachoeiras de Macacu, has added to our knowledge of the hawkmoths of that area and has been the source of many of the photographs included in this website.


How to use this website

On the right of this page is a list of the genera that occur in Brazil, and if you click on any of these you will be taken to a page that groups the similar species within that genera and provides information that will assist in their identification. From this key you can then move either to the photos of live specimens, photos of museum pinned specimens or additional information which includes the known species range. Alternatively you can go direct to the appropriate pages from the Navigation Bar at the top of each page.


For beginners who don’t know which genera to look at, there is a starter’s key that shows photographs of typical species from each of the 11 Keys.


When looking at the pinned specimens it should be noted that the colours do fade with time, and green is especially prone to fading. There are also noticeable differences between newly emerged and older live specimens, so it is more important to concentrate on the variations in patterns and shape rather than colouration. Even then there will be some specimens that cannot be identified for sure without internal examination, but these techniques are outside the scope of this website. Recent DNA bar-coding work is also challenging the status of a few of these species and separating new ones, so further changes are inevitable.


The references section in the Appendices list some other useful websites that should be used to supplement the information provided here, but by far the most comprehensive is the remarkable Sphingidae Taxonomic Inventory (STI) website (www.sphingidae.myspecies.info) which not only covers all the sphingids of South America but of every continent.


Acknowledgements

This website would not be possible without the help of my co-authors of the Hawkmoths of the Serra dos Orgaos book, Alexandre Soares and Jorge Bizarro. I would also like to thank the staff of the Entomology Department of the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) who granted access to the sphingidae collection, Dr Ian Kitching of the Department of Life Sciences in the London Natural History Museum for his invaluable help and advice, and to Jean Haxaire who has always been willing to share his extensive knowledge of South American sphingids. Most of the photos of pinned specimens were taken in the Rio Museum but some were also taken at the NHM in London and they are clearly labelled and are covered by the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License. Thanks are also due to all those who have sent me their photos and records, or have allowed me to copy photos from their own websites and databases.


Any errors on this website are entirely my own and should be notified to alanjmart@gmail.com so that they can be corrected.

This website has been designed and created by Alan Martin using Serif WebPlus X8 software. All the images are copyrighted and should not be downloaded without written permission.                                                       Last updated 24th July 2022   

Tribe

Genera

No

Ambulycini

Protambulyx

7


Adhemarius

6


Orecta

3

Sphingini

Manduca

30


Cocytius

6


Lintneria

1


Amphimoea

1


Neococytius

1


Neogene

4

Acherontiini

Agrius

1

Dilophonotini

Callionima

8


Enyo

5


Aleuron

6


Perigonia

6


Nyceryx

14


Baniwa

1


Unzela

2


Eupyrrhoglossum

2


Aellops

5


Isognathus

11


Errinyis

7


Phryxus

1


Hemeroplanes

3


Pseudosphinx

1


Pachylioides

1


Madoryx

3


Pachylia

3


Oryba

2


Pachygonidia

3

Philampelini

Eumorpha

13

Macroglossini

Xylophanes

42


Phanoxyla

1


Hyles

1


TOTAL

201