''Hyposmocoma molluscivora'' is a

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only state ...

moth Moths are a paraphyletic group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies, with moths making up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of w ...

whose

larva A larva (; plural larvae ) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle. ...

e are

predator Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill th ...

s, capturing

snail A snail is, in loose terms, a shelled gastropod. The name is most often applied to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name ''snail'' is also used for most of the members of the molluscan class G ...

s in their

silk Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The protein fiber of silk is composed mainly of fibroin and is produced by certain insect larvae to form cocoons. The best-known silk is obtained from the ...

, much like a hunting spider's web, and then crawling inside the snail's shell to eat it alive. It has been called the snail-eating caterpillar or the flesh-eating caterpillar, though no common name has been widely prescribed to it. They are case bearing moths, spinning a loose shell of their own which they carry around with them as protection, like bagworms. The specific snails they eat are of the '' Tornatellides''

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

. The caterpillars, which live exclusively on the islands of Maui and Molokai, are about long, and sometimes decorate their silk case with actual snail shells, perhaps as

camouflage Camouflage is the use of any combination of materials, coloration, or illumination for concealment, either by making animals or objects hard to see, or by disguising them as something else. Examples include the leopard's spotted coat, the b ...

. There are about 200 species of Lepidoptera (moths or butterflies) whose larvae are predatory, out of 150,000 known Lepidopteran species overall. However, this is one of the four known species that eat snails.

References

External links

SFGate article on the discovery of this species.
molluscivora Endemic moths of Hawaii Biota of Maui Biota of Molokai Moths described in 2005 {{Hyposmocoma-stub