iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 29/09/2026

If Snoop Dogg was a rescued Sunda Pangolin recovering from anaesthesia in Cambodia.

A Sunda Pangolin, a scaly anteater rescued from the illegal wildlife trade, is slowly waking up from anaesthesia in a veterinary clinic in Siem Reap, Cambodia. He looks high with his left eye half-open.

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 12/08/2026

Starts in a few minutes in Iceland.

Eclipse in Iceland in 7 minutes for partial, and a full hour for total

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 07/08/2026

A bit about my work training the rangers protecting the Angkor forest. They have my full support and admiration. apsaraauthority.gov.kh/2026/08/07/f...

Me walking in the jungle around the Angkor temples with rangers. I'm holding a GPS to find my way through the dense vegetation.

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 27/07/2026

Et tu peux afficher la dernière image aérienne de la région pour bien les positionner.

Capture d'ecran CIRB montrant une image aérienne du parc Georges Henri.

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 27/07/2026

Ce gros #ThumbnailFail de @rtbf-info.be - l'article (d'avril , aucune idée pourquoi il est aussi en évidence) parle d'un nématode (un ver rond) mais l'image montre le coléoptère longicorne qui le transporte.

Capture d écran RTBF
"Biodiversité:
Le nématode du pin, un redoutable globe‑trotteur"

AVEC une photo d'un coléoptère.

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 04/06/2026

Puis ils sont nuls, ils ont affiché la mauvaise face de la lune.

Une capture d'écran montrant que la face caché de la lune dans le jeu maptag est en fait la face visible de la lune.

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 04/06/2026

Shhhh ! Keep it secret ! #OSINTforNoobs www.google.com/maps/@25.156...

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 23/05/2026

Double rainbow, all the way across the skies! What does it mean?! 😭

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 20/04/2026

I have to go to work and this is not my cat.

A tabby cat casually standing in my bedroom. I have no idea how he entered my apartment.

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 08/04/2026

And just like that, I've reached 2,000 species recorded on @inaturalist.bsky.social ! I've uploaded all the photos I've ever taken of animals and plants across the world on iNat, a fantastic collaborative platform allowing scientists to keep track of all species on Earth.

Screenshot of Inaturalist showing12 picture of insects with their name, 6635 observations, 2000 species and 2690 identifications

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 17/03/2026

Of course I had to forget one screenshot and mess the thread. Here it is:

kuplungos suggested an ID : Superfamily Tineoidea
Bagworms, Clothes Moths, and Allies

stephane_degreef commented
@kuplungos if no one solved that mystery yet, I'll be the one doing it in January when I get back to Cambodia. I'll spend a few days looking for cases that still contain caterpillars and/or pupae and will raise them as per @hkmoths methodology. I can't believe it's been a decade and no one solved this one yet ! As good as Silkhenge !

kuplungos commented
Well, I'll just sit back and collect them until we have an answer. Tried to ask around, raise awareness, but got no luck out of that.
I've looked through thousands of observations in the general area, collected most of them. A bit of a problem is that these ones look a bit too similar to another species I've seen identified, but the larva still has a distinct flat head like this https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/241066526
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/269340787
I've been wondering if it's even described or just haven't been connected to the adult form yet.
Good luck!

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 17/03/2026

If it is indeed a new species, I'd love to have it named as Edosa angkoriana (what's the proper equivalent to angkorensis?) - there are indeed many new species to discover in Angkor and Siem Reap province, and it would be cool to have them named after Angkor. Now to find who can ID or describe it!

hkmoths commented
Edosa is a species rich genus, and undescribed taxa away from Borneo or the Malay peninsula, Sumatra and Java (the Sunda Shelf) should be expected.
Gaden Robinson's paper on the Sundanian Edosa (from 2008) is comprehensive, and a must read for fans of 1960s, 70s and 80s rock guitarists, as Gaden named dozens of spp nov - all after famous (or infamous) rock guitarists.
species epithets new to the genus in 2008 include andersonella, berryella, bodiddlyella, claptonella, driscollella and plenty more.....
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1017/S1477200008002685
https://www.catalogueoflife.org/data/search?TAXON_ID=632KX&rank=species&status=accepted&status=provisionally%20accepted

hkmoths commented
and Wolfram Mey could be a person to contact - he described a new South African Edosa in 2019.
Mey, W. (2019). Dryadaulidae, Tineidae (Lepidoptera. – In: Mey W. & Krüger M. (Eds), The Lepidoptera fauna of a crater valley in the Great Escarpment of South Africa: The Asante Sana Project.

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 17/03/2026

Experts chimed in. HKMoths, a regional expert, confirmed it was a Tineid moth, but wouldn't put a genus to it. Edosa sp. looks like a good match, especially as it was also photographed by Gerard Chartier in Tatai (Southwest Cambodia) but we're not 100% sure yet what it actually is. #Tineidae #Edosa

hkmoths suggested an ID : Family Tineidae

hkmoths commented
has Edosa vibes - but those labial palps.... very odd.

stephane_degreef commented
Could it be a new species ? I have already 2-3 adults. Not sure the way to handle these specimens properly (I'm an ant and bee guy !)

hkmoths commented
pop into a freezer inside a small pot or stopped test tube
sp. nov. is not impossible

stephane_degreef commented
Alright - freezer in test tube ! I'll probably end up with 5-10 specimens. Let's hope for both sexes, then we'll see who's best to ID/describe these.

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 17/03/2026

I photographed the first moth under every angle. Top, side, 3/4, underside, everything ! Then uploaded all the images on iNat under this observation. But...

iNat observation with photos of the golden moth and caption:
The famous trilobite moth, that is being searched for since 2017 for its caterpillar hidden in a trilobite-shaped case and probably feeding on lichen on tree bark and the sandstones of the Angkor temples. These are two individuals raised from caterpillars collected in January 2026 in Angkor Botanical Garden.

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 17/03/2026

I quickly informed everyone on iNat that I had emergences. I started also taking pictures. I hoped it would be something can easily identify. How naive of me.

Screenshot from iNaturalist:

stephane_degreef commented
Hi everyone !
I've collected two dozens trilobite moths casing over the last months in the Dipterocarp forest of Angkor and kept them in a closed container with bark from host tree and associated lichen. I've kept them in a jar for one or two months, not even knowing if any had survived (they barely move). Today I had an emergence of a tiny moth in the container. It's likely linked as there was no other organism in the containment area. I will provide pictures soon.
Stéphane

portioid commented
that's so cool! can't wait :D

stephane_degreef commented
Two emergences ! More soon. Very young caterpillars too. They may have lay eggs !

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 17/03/2026

And then, on 13 March 2026, it happened. I opened the jar to check for humidity, like I did every few days, I noticed a tiny golden moth looking back at me. I wasn't sure yet it was the mystery moth but it certainly looked like a good candidate for it. I was ecstatic ! I had to share this with all !

A golden brown moth with a ginger flush of a head resting on a piece of bark.

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 17/03/2026

A few days later, on 20 January 2026, I started collecting live caterpillars to raise them in captivity. Over the next few weeks, I collected about two dozens, not knowing if the cases were still containing live caterpillars or were just empty. As most were immobile I had no idea if I would succeed.

An iNaturalist observation of a casing with the notes: "I have two live caterpillars and feed for the trilobite moth caterpillars."

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 17/03/2026

When I came back to Siem Reap on 1 January 2026, I went on a hunt. I knew on which stones, which trees, these caterpillars lived. I just wasn't sure what they ate, how to raise them. I proceeded by trial and errors. On 16 January 2026, I managed to locate, extract and photograph two caterpillars.

A microscope photo of a yellowish caterpillar with a flat-topped dark brown head, next to its sand and lichen casing.

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 17/03/2026

iNaturalist allowed me to see similar casings found all over Asia, from India to Indonesia !! No one seemed to know what they were. But some observations included the caterpillar, actually moving ! This was super interesting ! I decided that I would collect them around Angkor and raise them.

stephane_degreef commented
This is exciting ! :) They're common as dirt in Angkor; literally the most common lepidopteran construction encountered in every sandstone temple in the Angkor Archaeological Park. You'll find them on every single sandstone of every temple, but they're a bit more rare in the forests. So it'll be no problem whatsoever to find/collect. What could help is to know what month to collect them to raise my chances of finding more than an empty case.

stephane_degreef commented
This observation is crucial to me. It tells me we can find tubes with live caterpillars and the head is indeed very distinctive ! I'm on the hunt !
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/241066526

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 17/03/2026

Along with all the other insects, arachnids and plants, I uploaded all my photos of the mystery casings but couldn't find an ID for them. No one was really helping with identification. Then someone did. It unravelled the extend of the mystery. My photo was added to a project called "Trilobite Moths"

iNaturalist observation of the casing on white background, with the caption: Notes: Mystery case of a suspected case-bearing caterpillar, apparently made of lichen, sand and silk, always in that shape, about 25mm long. Commonly found on sandstone temples in the Angkor region. Always empty, so they may also be remnants of cocoon after metamorphosis. Never been able to find a caterpillar or adult nearby but it must be a very common species as you can literally find several such structures for every square meter of sandstone wall in Angkor.

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 17/03/2026

One of my projects is to establish a species list for Angkor. All species of plants, animals, fungi ever identified in Siem Reap province. I went back to my photos from 2002-2016, including tens of thousands of insects. Including a mystery casing. I uploaded them ALL on @inaturalist.bsky.social !

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 17/03/2026

But before I left, I took some nice, clean, closeup photos of one of the casings on white background. That one appeared to be empty, so I filed it under "Tineoidea caterpillar casing / chrysalis ?" - I photographed it a kilometre southwest of Angkor Wat, in a Dipterocarp forest on 25 December 2015.

One of the caterpillar casings photographed from the top on a perfectly white background. It shows the circular hood attached to the cylindrical case hiding the hypothetical body of a caterpillar. The caterpillar might be feeding on lichen under the hood, protected from ants and other predators.

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 17/03/2026

So I kept documenting them, month after month, all over the temples of Angkor and the Dipterocarp forest surrounding them, hoping someone would eventually tell me what they are. Then in 2016 I left Cambodia, not knowing, with all my pictures on my computer hard drive. Time would tell, eventually.

Another caterpillar casing made of sand, lichen and silk, tightly attached on the underside of a sandstone carving on a wall of Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, Cambodia, on 14 May 2014.

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 17/03/2026

I kept photographing them regularly, assuming they would be chrysalis of case from casebearing caterpillars in the Tineid or Psychid family. I was more into ants and other hymenopters, I never doubted some lepidopterist would have had them identified already from Cambodia, Thailand or Vietnam. Sure.

A greenish caterpillar case made of grains of sand and lichen, resting on a green bark. The casing appears to be made of the same lichen that is growing on the bark. This one was photographed on a tree near Prasat Tchroung, in the northwestern corner of the fortress of Angkor Thom, Siem Reap, Cambodia, on 1 December 2013.

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 17/03/2026

Sometimes I would take photos of other animals and plants, and only notice a decade later that I had inadvertently photographed one of these mysterious creatures. Here, a Calotes irawadi lizard I photographed in Beng Mealea temple on 6 October 2013. It's only in 2025 that I noticed the two casings.

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 17/03/2026

On closer look, one could notice the 'hood' wasn't a perfect circle, but more like a horseshoe crab, with two rear-pointing flaps, one of each side of the long, tapering cylindrical part containing the suspected caterpillar. Always the same colour, texture and size. The mystery remained for now.

A top-down photograph of the caterpillar case, showing a granular texture and grey-brown colour making it a perfect camouflage on tree bark and sandstone. This one was photographed on 13 September 2013 on a tree near Daun Mea temple in Angkor Thom temple complex, Siem Reap, Cambodia.

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 17/03/2026

While I often saw these cases, I didn't systematically photograph them. But they were always found immobile, secured by silk strands on their support, either on sandstones from the Angkor temples, or on some trees covered in lichen. They appeared made of grains of sand, lichen and silk. Mysterious.

A photo of moth caterpillar case, with a flattened hood and conical tail, resting on a tree bark green from various lichen growths. This particual photo was taken in Ta Prohm temple on 8 August 2013.

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 17/03/2026

It all started in Cambodia, on 8 September 2002, when I came across some strange insect constructions on the sandstone carvings of Bayon temple, one of the most famous landmarks of the Angkor Archaeological Park in Siem Reap, Cambodia. I immediately thought of Lepidoptera, maybe a chrysalis. 2/xx

Three moth caterpillar cases, apparently made of lichen and dirt, attached to a dark grey sandstone bearing typical flower carvings from the Angkorian period. Discreet green moss and pale green crust lichen can be seen growing on the stone near the casing, which have the overall appearing of trilobites, with a round "head" and a long cylindrical tail. The cases measure about 2.5 centimeters long.

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 17/03/2026

Let me tell you the magical story of the #TrilobiteMoth, a mystery that followed me since 2002 and has finally been (partially and almost) resolved thanks to the dedication of fantastic entomologists from all over the world collaborating on the fantastic platform @inaturalist.bsky.social ! 1/xx

A dorsal (top-view) photography of a tiny golden moth on white background. It has long filiform antennae, ginger setae on the head, a dark collar of setae on the thorax, and the rest of the body and wings is covered in golden scales. The wings hag long golden fringes. The copyright mentions © Stéphane De Greef 2026.

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 06/03/2026

And the winner of the most ridiculously cute moth attracted to my UV Light Trap goes to.... (Comostola sp?, Geometridae, shot in Siem Reap, Cambodia)

A very small green moth with golden fringe on its wings. It looks like a pokemon version of itself.

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 05/03/2026

My Facebook and Instagram accounts have been permanently suspended without warning or possibility to appeal.

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 26/01/2026

Hey @inaturalist.bsky.social something super weird is happening with my app on Android. While my observations and photos are of insects and herps, it's showing birds as thumbnails. We know birds aren't real so is this some kind of birder conspiracy to replace all iNat records with birbs?!

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Stéphane De Greef @stefdegreef.eurosky.social · 05/01/2026

As an example, if it's located here, we're inside an area that is considered Cambodian land by both countries, so there's no reason to make a fuss about it. Thailand likely has similar bunkers on their side of the border and no one is getting upset about it.

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