India – National Moth Week

Moth Monitoring Programme for Schools: National Moth Week in India

Liti — Thu, 09 Jun 2022 02:31:37 +0000

Moth Monitoring Programme for Schools: We are happy to announce first of its kind programme for schools.

Moth Monitoring Programme for Schools is a subset of National Moth Week which is global citizen science that happens every July. Unlike all years where we use to observe moths on light sheets and reported them to citizen science portals, this year we starting to look at life histories of moths. The Caterpillar Rearing Project is a result of this change.

Through this project, we will be engaging schools to carry out two months caterpillar rearing activity from their neighbhouring vicinity. The data will be fed on an online portal. We are hopeful to receive some interesting data from all over the country.

This competition is open for 15 schools from each regional zone ( North, South, East and Wes). Students of Class 6,7,8 can participate. The school with highest life history records will win the prize of Field Guide to Indian Moths.
All study resources and trainings will be provided for the schools for free.

This is a collaborative project of iNaturewatch Foundation, Diversity India, Nature Mates and WWF India ( Delhi).

India Leads Participation in National Moth Week’s 10th Year

Liti — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 12:26:32 +0000

Guest post by Pritha Dey, Country Coordinator for India

National Moth Week ended July 25 with over 1000 registrations from India!! In the 10^th year of this global initiative, National Moth Week saw unprecedented participation from the different corners of the country.

As the country coordinator for India, I had equal fun in arranging the event and also encouraging people through articles and interviews. Moth-ers of different ages and backgrounds came together and shared their enthusiasm to document moths in their backyards, or by hosting public events. This year, during this week we had uncommon spells of rain in different parts of the country, which put some plans on hold but couldn’t dampen the moth-ing spirit.

Two of Indian Citizen-science portals announced prizes for the top contributors to incentivize the effort people put in this global initiative. In spite of the bad weather and the full moon, there were a large number of observations put up in each of the portals.

India Biodiversity Portal had 2126 observations of 664 taxa. 69 users registered, with 58 uploaders and 52 identifiers

Here is a map of observations

Moths of India, a peer-reviewed portal, saw observations of 750, of which 450 were peer-reviewed and uploaded on the website, by about 30 observers.

Here is a map of observations:

iNaturalist, as a part of DiversityIndia had 8274 records, 1045 taxa with 589 observers and 200 identifiers

Here is a map

I can’t thank the people enough who volunteered, including those who translated the NMW fliers into 21 languages and those who participated in each step of the event, making it reach more people and countries than ever before. Looking forward to next year with much more enthusiasm!

Moth Week event at WWF-India – Guest post by Kaustubh Srikanth

Liti — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 19:07:59 +0000

We are delighted to share that WWF-India was invited to participate in the National Moth Week, wherein we organized a moth observation and awareness event at the Secretariat on the 24^th July, 2019.

Two moth setups were placed- one near the entrance of the office, while the other was placed in our office’s Butterfly Garden.

Glad to share that our office backyard is home to over 15 species of moths that were recorded in our backyard itself. Topics regarding moth identification, behaviour, breeding biology and habitats were discussed through informative activities such as moth themed quizzes and moth tambola. The participants were fascinated to spot the Beet Webworm Moth which was around us through the event.

We had received registrations from 45 participants, but due to rains only 15 were able to make it. Overall we received a positive response on the event organized and we are grateful to have been invited by National Moth Week and Dr. Shubalaxmi Vaylure to guide us in conducting this event.

NMW Welcomes Dr. Vijay Barve to Our Science Advisory Board

Liti — Thu, 18 Jun 2015 12:04:02 +0000

Vijay is an IT professional by training and nature lover by heart. He has been a nature enthusiast from childhood interested in birds and invertebrates. His interest in butterflies and moths started with rearing of caterpillars collected from backyard garden. He continued his interest in biodiversity recordings and with development of Internet got involved with cyber-communities involved with biodiversity. He is co-founder of DiversityIndia (http://diversityindia.org) and has been co-ordinating the communities since 2001. He has also been associated with organizations such as WWF India, BNHS, RANWA, GBIF, NatureMates, Indian Foundation for Butterflies and MonarchWatch in different capacities. He has also been an active contributor of wikipedia, iNaturalist, Indian Biodiversity Portal, Bhutan Biodiversity Portal, Project Noah, and Encyclopedia of Life

He has been working in the field of conservation of medicinal plants since 1994 in the Foundation for revitalization of Local Health Traditions (http://www.frlht.org) in Bangalore India.

Vijay has a masters degree in computer science and PhD in Geography. His doctoral research focused on discovery of biodiversity data form social networking websites.

Vijay started devoting more time for Moths once he realized the gaps in Moth data for most of the world compared to taxa like Birds and Butterflies. For close to a decade now, he is trying to get more and more people interested in moths and document the occurrence records of moths mainly in Indian subcontinent. He has been coordinating National Moths Week in India since 2013.

Meet NMW Partner – DiversityIndia

Liti — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 20:59:45 +0000

Since 2001 DiversityIndia (http://diversityindia.org/)has been organizing communities to document biodiversity of Indian Subcontinent. It started with a cyber-community on Yahoo groups called ButterflyIndia to talk about Butterflies of India. The discussions began with 25 members and over the years generated more than 1500 members. Very soon the cyber group started meeting together to share and learn from each other. Members wanted to explore other taxa not just Butterflies which gave way to IndianMoths, DragonflyIndia, SpiderIndia and so on.

IndianMoths group has been active since 2005 and has close to 400 members. Members have been documenting moths in all parts Indian subcontinent and helping each other identify them. The group also utilizes Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, iNaturalist, IndiaBiodiversityPortal and Project Noah to collaborate and share.

The basic philosophy being Documentation, Education, Research and Conservation. We are trying to document as many species in as many locations spanning all the seasons possible. The species are identified by members and confirmed records will be used for further analysis and would feed in conservation efforts.