DIY Nature Science: Helping the World Count Moths for Conservation

With National Moth Week getting closer ((July 19 to 27), I decided it's time to start making one of my dreams come true--creating an online and hard copy photo album as a guide to the moths of Knox County, Ohio.

Since I moved here 2 years ago, I have had 50 of my photographs of moths identified and added to the county's listings on a database maintained by the Butterflies and Moths of North America project. That brings the county's total on that listing to 63, bringing it to 7th place in number of moth species of Ohio's 88 counties.

But that's only because there may be only three or four volunteers sending in photos of moths at their porch lights. No knowledge of moths is needed. I have none--only a camera and a flashlight.

The actual figure for each Ohio county is probably about 500 moths each, since that's the expectation for the average size county area, at least in North America.

All you have to do is submit photos to www.butterfliesandmoths.org. Or you can send them to other organizations listed at the National Moth Week website, (http://nationalmothweek.org/). National Moth Week would be a good time to give this a try, even if only for 15 minutes on one of the 9 days the "Week" comprises. And the "National" Moth Week accepts photos from around the world, using the "National" word generically to mean whatever nation you're in! If you choose the "butterflies and moths" site, you can indicate that you are doing it as part of National Moth Week and the data will be shared with that organization as well.

Back to the album I'm starting, here are the 11 moth photos I have as of tonight, that have been identified. I lost many of my photographs of the other 39 moths I had stored on a failed external hard drive, but I still have over a thousand photos in my new portable hard drive, and possibly other photos I can retrieve from a stack of full memory sticks and other hidden storage places on my computer. And I'm finding more new moths all the time, plus getting return visits from some of the 39 moths whose photographs I've lost.

For a longer version of this blog, go to my website at www.doncomis.simplesite.com and look at today's "Daily Nature Blog".