Louise's Underwing is a moth

Moth

A moth is an insect closely related to the butterfly, both being of the order Lepidoptera. Moths form the majority of this order; there are thought to be 150,000 to 250,000 different species of moth , with thousands of species yet to be described...

 of the Noctuidae

Noctuidae

The Noctuidae or owlet moths are a family of robustly-built moths that includes more than 35,000 known species out of possibly 100,000 total, in more than 4,200 genera. They constitute the largest family in the Lepidoptera....

 family. The epithet, louiseae, is in honor of "the late Louise (Mrs. E.P.) Mellon" who funded the Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Carnegie Museum of Natural History, located at 4400 Forbes Avenue in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, was founded by the Pittsburgh-based industrialist Andrew Carnegie in 1896...

 expedition on which the type specimen was collected.

Distribution

It is found from North Carolina

North Carolina

North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...

 south to Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

 and west through Arkansas

Arkansas

Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...

 to Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

.

Life cycle

Adults are on wing in May. There is probably one generation per year.

The larvae feed on Vaccinium arboreum

Vaccinium arboreum

Vaccinium arboreum is a species of Vaccinium native to the southeastern United States, from southern Virginia west to southeastern Nebraska, south to Florida and eastern Texas, and north to Illinois....

and probably other blueberries.