National Moth Week

Our annual public moth night in High Park (Toronto, Canada) was once again affected by weather. Rather than risk another rainy evening like last year, we rescheduled to July 26 and joined High Park’s regular weekly moth study group. The result was low attendance by the public but a good showing of moths – 116 species including 27 new to our all-time annual moth night list. And one of the participants has now joined the weekly group.

Many thanks to the Toronto Entomologists’ Association, the High Park Nature Centre and the High Park moth study group for all your help!

High Park is a large urban park in Toronto (about 400 acres). About 1/3 of the park consists of nationally rare oak savannah and woodlands. For more information about the park and its natural features, visit highparknature.org. The all-time list and other information are posted on the Moths page of this website.

Submitted by Karen Yukich

Moths are nocturnal creatures and so are inherently mysterious. Since their intricate patterns and colors are rarely observed in casual encounters at the porch light, I paint them large. It is intimate. I have encountered each of these moths at my home near Charlottesville, Virginia. They are collected, and then they spend the night in my refrigerator in order to slow them down for their photo shoot the next day. Afterward each is released in excellent condition. There are thousands of species of moths locally and I am looking forward to painting their nearly endless variety. You can find me any warm night hovering in the lure of the light just like the moths.

www.mothpaintings.com

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The annual moth night was held at the Cairns Botanic Gardens on 11 July 2018 to coincide with the monthly meeting of the Friends of the Botanic Gardens, Cairns. Sixty-two people attended, including several children.

Moth Night was started in the USA seven years ago. Of course, this is the northern summer when the most moths would be present. In July we are in the midst of the dry season and insect numbers are down. But being in the tropics there is always something about. We did not have an abundance of insects at the lights but members with torches (flashlights) were able to find many insects on vegetation along with sleeping lizards and birds.

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The Moths of India website (http://www.mothsofindia.org) is a citizen science, internet-based and peer-reviewed resource devoted to Indian moths. It is a sister website of the Butterflies of India, Cicadas of India, Odonata of India, Reptiles of India, Amphibians of India and Birds of India websites, which collectively form the Biodiversity Atlas-India (http://bioatlasindia.org). The moth website is designed to disseminate comprehensive information on various aspects of the natural history and biology of Indian moths, encourage their observation to study their natural history and ecology, gather population and distributional data in a centralized database, and spread awareness about their conservation. The moth website includes photographic records, distributional data, and natural history information under various tabs of the species pages.

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Fieldguide’s approach to machine learning in LepSnap

LepSnap is an app created by Fieldguide that uses image recognition technology to identify Lepidoptera (moths & butterflies) to the scientific rank that is feasible with a photo, location and date. Read more about LepSnap here.

One of the most frequently asked questions we get is: How does your image recognition system work? Here’s my attempt at unpacking that question…

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Twelve enthusiastic moth-ers spent the first official weekend of National Moth Week 2018 at the Karnala Bird Sanctuary just outside of Mumbai for an overnight camp devoted to observing moths in a region known for its profusion of exotic species.  

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Guest post By Jessica Hernández-Jerónimo, Eduardo A. Recillas-Bautista and Juan C. García-Morales.

Lepidoptera are one of the most diverse orders of insects in the world, with approximately 155,000 species of which 9% are in Mexico! It is surprising that of those 14,507 species described, only 12% are butterflies, one of the best known, beautiful and charismatic groups in popular culture, even in a scientific aspect; But what about the remaining 88%? It consists of moths, which despite having the highest percentage of species richness remains a “despicable” group, with a bad reputation and an insufficiently studied taxonomy except in agronomic and clinical aspects.

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Max Frederick at a 2011 moth night at age 8.

Max Frederick attended his first moth night in East Brunswick, N.J., when he was just 5 or 6 years old and barely waist-high to the adults who crowded around the lighted sheet with him. Now 15, he still remembers it.

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A new children’s book by Connecticut author Karlin Gray echoes what avid moth-ers have always known: There are no “ordinary” moths; each one is special in its own way.

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iNaturalist is a place where you can record what you see in nature, meet other nature lovers, and learn about the natural world. For information on how to start (including how to submit observations), click here.

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