Montana Field Guide

The Red-winged Wave (Dasyfidonia avuncularia) is a colorful day-flying moth, occasionally mistaken for a butterfly when flying. The forewing is chocolate brown with a whitish submarginal shade, and black postmedial, antemedial and median lines. The hindwing is bright reddish orange with two bold black transverse lines and fine black striations. The wingspan is about 25 mm (Anweiler and Schmidt 2003).

The larvae are red-brown with shades of pink and have a broken yellow spiracular band (Powell and Opler 2009).

Shropshire and Tallamy (2025) provide a list, with synonymies, of 13,055 described native, exotic, and occasional straying Lepidoptera species of North America, north of Mexico; known but undescribed taxa, taxa with unresolved taxonomy, and excluded species are also included. The main manuscript includes links to supplementary materials, including a reference list for Lepidoptera of North America north of Mexico, and a filterable spreadsheet with information on taxonomy, synonymy, size ranges of species, distribution by state, province, and country with references, and host-plant Family and Genus associations with references.

The immature stages are undescribed (Anweiler and Schmidt 2003). Adults are diurnal with a single flight from early April through early July (Powell and Opler 2009).

The similar Dasyfidonia macdunnoughi, which is endemic to the Cascades and Sierra Nevada of California, has a forewing with whitish bands in the median and basal areas, and the hindwing has only one (or none) complete black line. D. avuncularia is also superficially similar to The Infant Moth (Archiaris infans), but the hindwing has two crisp black lines not joined to a broad dark patch on the inner margin as it is in A. infans (McLeod 2006).

The Red-winged Wave is found in open conifer forests and sagebrush habitats (Powell and Opler 2009).

The larvae feed on Prunus leaves. Adults nectar at flowers including those of Ceanothus and Prunus (Powell and Opler 2009).