On a sunny Saturday morning in October 2022, Shlomi Levi and his family were going for a hike. As they were leaving their apartment building in Ness Ziona, south of Tel Aviv, Shlomi noticed a moth near the building entrance light, not far from the garbage cans. He snapped two photos on his cell phone. When they returned, the moth was gone. But Shlomi had the photos.

Shlomi is a farm animal veterinarian, an avid birder and photographer. In the last couple of years, he has also become interested in moths.

That evening, he tried to identify the moth in the photos. He knew it was a geometer but also knew he’d never seen this species before. On the Israel nature site run by Oz Ritner, National Moth Week’s country coordinator for Israel, Shlomi found what he was looking for: The moth was a Paulus’ geometer – Selidosema combustaria.

Paulus’ geometer was first collected by an insect dealer named Paulus and described by German entomologist Rudolf Püngeler in 1903. This specimen of a male is housed in a museum in Germany. The collection site is described as “near the Jordan River,” but since he was a rare insect dealer, it is likely that the location is not correct because he would not have wanted others to know where to find this rare species. The one Shlomi found was a dark morph of the species, compared to the ones found previously.

This enigmatic species was not seen again until 2014 when a few individuals showed up at Oz’s light trap in the Lahav area of Israel. Three individuals were sent to be housed in the German museum after a DNA sample for taken. Another is in an Israeli collection.

This moth was not seen again until Shlomi found it in 2022.

“This is why citizen science is so important,” said National Moth Week co-founder Liti Haramaty. “When people of all backgrounds, not just scientists, document moths in their local habitats, they can turn up amazing discoveries, like Shlomi did. It can happen to anybody.”

Available just in time for National Moth Week participants in British Columbia, Canada and the USA states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, western Montana, and nearby areas, PNW Moths enables users to identify the >1,200 moth species found on the Pacific Northwest Moths website. To learn more about the app, including tips about how to use it, see this instructional page. The PNW Moths app is available on the Google Play Store.

A total of 135 species of moths were identified, including 4 new for the High Park Moth Study, bringing the study’s all-time total to 1028 species! This citizen science project began in 2016 and broke through the 1000 species mark earlier this season. For more about the study, see Meet the Mothia, in the Toronto Star.

This year’s moth night also brought out a good variety of other insects, particularly leafhoppers and small beetles.

High Park, Toronto is a large urban park (161 ha, about 400 acres) with diverse habitats including a globally rare black oak savannah. For more information about the park see highparknature.org. Our public Moth Night event has been held annually for about two decades in partnership with the Toronto Entomologists’ Association, the High Park Nature Centre, High Park Nature and more recently the High Park Moth Study group. We look forward to hosting another public event next year.

So why register your moth “event” for National Moth Week. What is the significance?

In short – every single observation counts, by contributing to the “bigger picture”.

How??

Citizen science is not new – collection of moth data and bird data from observers in the United Kingdom has taken place for several hundred years. The internet has revolutionized the process, though, through citizen science portals / apps that make it easier than it has ever been to photograph an observation and submit it, along with the location and time-stamp, to a portal for collating biological data. These collated data are then checked for accuracy, usually by researchers, or by dedicated volunteers, and once verified, can become part of a project run by researchers looking at (e.g.) changes in species distribution over time, changes in species phenology (e.g. when they occur and in what life stage they occur, or when they flower, or something like when the first cuckoo call of spring happens each year). Only by aggregating data from many sources can projects tackle big (regional, national, international or global) issues, such as how species are responding to changes in the landscape globally.

Let me give you one example that I have been involved with. I run a number of recording projects on iNaturalist, one of which is for moths that are found in Hong Kong. Data is provided by many people, some of whom contribute thousands of observations, some contribute just a few observations. All together, the distribution and coverage is far better than I could ever achieve on my own, and gives me a much better idea about _which_ species should receive greater attention for conservation action. I teamed up with academics from The University of Hong Kong to look at other questions, one of which was “is climate change impacting moths in Hong Kong”, to which the answer is “probably” – with different species responding in different, sometimes unexpected ways. Some species were shifting their distribution uphill, a few the other way, some not shifting significantly at all and some shifting their distribution northwards, i.e. tropical species arriving in subtropical Hong Kong in the last few decades, just as is happening with many species shifting distributions elsewhere in the world.

Are “common” species important ?

Absolutely. Have you ever heard of the Passenger Pigeon? – it was North America’s commonest bird species in the 1890s, yet by 1930 it was extinct (gone for ever). We do not know exactly what the future holds for any species on Earth, including us, Homo sapiens. But we cannot assume that just because a species is common it is not vulnerable to extinction.

So records of common moth species, the ones that are familiar to the moth recorders and researchers, are _really_ important, just as records of currently rare moth species are important. Thus everyone’s contribution to National Moth Week, whether just one or two moths from a backyard light or chanced upon in the garden, or of hundreds of moths seen in an all night mothing session, all go to building a bigger picture of how moths are distributed (spatially and in abundance) now – and can be compared in years to come. Every observation counts.

If you thought it’s not important to register with NMW, please reconsider. Your data is meaningful. If you haven’t used a citizen science portal before, there’s a first time for everyone. Yes, it can seem scary and overwhelming, but these apps have real people, amateur naturalists, professional biologists, academics, kids, using them, supporting newcomers and “old pros” alike! You will be made welcome, and there are people in the iNaturalist community who will help if you need help. A good place to start is the “getting started” page.

Now go and register – get outside and mothing (by day or night) in your backyard and enjoy your contribution and participation into and with the global community. Please.

—

Dr. Roger C. KENDRICK lives and works in Hong Kong. He is a Natioanl Moth Week team member.

The first Moth Night I attended was back in 2012. I was an avid birder for an entire 2 years at that point, but once you get the nature spark, it pulls you in.  Birding is exciting, and as a “lister,” I have a natural passion to see “new” creatures …. “Lifers” as we call it in birding.

Birding starts to slow after the May migration wanes, and doesn’t pick up again until August with shorebird migration. Sooooo… what to do during that “downtime” in June and July… that’s where the moths come in!

I admit it, I came in to this not knowing what to expect. I saw there was a National Moth Week kickoff event that we saw advertised, and decided to check it out.  What did I know about moths? Well, they flit around lights, they eat holes in your sweaters and are boring, right? WRONG!

We have a term in Birding called “Spark Bird” – that’s the bird that hooks you in and gets you excited (and in some cases, obsessed) about birds.  Well, I had a “Spark Moth” that intrigued me back in 2009 – the Royal Walnut Moth (or Regal Moth) … I found it barely flitting around in my front yard. This thing was enormous and gorgeous.  I decided I needed to get it to rehab because “it didn’t look like it was healthy.” Little did I know, they live to reproduce and that’s it.   I actually went so far as to contact a professor in New York State to figure out how to get it help..I soon was educated in Silk Moth life-cycles and started to get the “bug” to learn more about moths.

When my (then boyfriend, now) husband and I first attended National Moth Week events in NJ, we could not get enough! We went from event to event, “lifing” new moths one more beautiful than the last.  It even got to the point where each year, we put the week on our calendars well in advance to make sure we didn’t commit ourselves to other events, because, we had moths to see!

These creatures truly are amazing. They’re not like the sparrows of the insect world (what we call LBJ’s (Little Brown Jobs))  They are colorful, beautiful and interesting in their own right.

One thing that amuses non-birders about us crazy birders is that we often “chase” rare birds.. that is, we will often share information about the location of a rare or unusual bird withing the community and others will come and look for it. If you miss it, it is called “dipping.”   Well, for me, mothing is no different.  A friend of mine worked at a car dealership in Keyport, NJ and had posted that a Luna Moth (for some, a “holy grail” moth) was hanging out on the side wall of the dealership.  Of course, I was at work in Jersey City, and had to get home, get my car and make my way to Keyport…. yes, I dipped!  But alas, much like birding, other opportunities arise.   The next year, my husband and I vacationed in New Hampshire and had a “flyby” …. in the birding world, this is called a “BVD” (Better Views Desired) … and then, a month later, a friend got word out that he had a Luna Moth just hanging out on his garage door, and welcomed us to his home for what we call in the birding world “upgrade.”   Yessssss!!!

Much like birding, people have their favorite “patches,” that is, a favorite spot to go and observe.   For some reason, I always had luck at our local Park and Ride. By the time I would leave for work, these beautiful creatures would “roost” on the side of the building. It actually started to make me look forward to my commute (if that’s possible.)

So here we are in 2020 – Quarantine, Lockdown, Social Distancing…. sigh! The natural world has been the one constant that gets me through the days (and nights.) Whether it is checking out which birds come to our feeder, what beetles are eating our plants in our garden, or watching NEOWISE, the comet move higher into the sky- it helps to go back to the basics sometimes to feel connected.

You can be sure of one thing… I have our lights, our sheet and iNaturalist all ready to go for National Moth Week 2020.  I can’t wait to hear all the reports.

Good Birding (ehhh, Mothing) to you!

Carl Barrentine, participants since 2013 and National Moth Week team member, is documenting moth species flying in his backyard. Carl will share his methods and findings in a series of daily videos during National Moth Week 2020.

Contributing to National Moth Week with iNaturalist is simple:

Download the free iNaturalist app, photograph and make a separate observation for each moth, check that the location and date are correct, and identify each as precisely as you can. It’s ok if you can just get to family.

All moths observed between July 18 – 26 will be automatically included!

Be sure to join the National Moth Week 2020 project as well: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/national-moth-week-2020