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".

Spotted Grass Moth



Common Metarranthis

Crocus geometer

Yellowish Zanclognatha marcidilenea

Lettered Zanclognatha lituralis

White-lined Bomolocha

Unadorned carpet

Dark-banded Owlet

Ambiguous

Phragmitis Wainscot

Common Angle

Moths Coming Out for Spring

The first moth of the season for me.  (Photo by Don Comis)

Moths are mushrooming in numbers with the warm weather.  I saw my first moth this year on April 20.  The next day I photographed five moths and missed more, then found one inside my bedroom and bathroom.

Then the temperature dropped from the 60s Fahrenheit to the 40s tonight and at midnight I only saw one tiny probable moth and one spider either in a struggle with himself or with prey, I couldn't tell.

I like photographing moths because they're important pollinators that need protection, they're under studied, they're easy to find--and there's a website that has regional experts identify your digital photographs for you, quickly and free. Your photographs provide data for a "Butterflies and Moths of North America" survey (www.butterfliesandmoths.org) and help research and conservation efforts.

I'm waiting for word on photographs of 6 species I have sent in to the site since April 20, to see if they are among the 19 moth species I've previously added to my county's list on their site (Knox County, Ohio) or if they're new ones for me. 

One example of how much volunteers are needed is the fact that in my first year of living in Ohio, last year, I brought the total of moth species listed for Knox on the site from 13 to 32.  And an expert told me that we can assume that the average county has about 500 species!

(Not to mention that I didn't know a single moth before I began this project.)

Moths Outnumber Birds and Butterflies--March 28, 2014

Photograph of "rosy maple moth" by Jim McCormac, on back cover of the Ohio Department of  Natural Resources Division of Wildlife's newest free field guide, "Moths of Ohio", published in March 2014.

Ailanthus webworm moth.  I call this the Hawaiian moth because it looks like it has hibiscus flowers on its wings.  This it the first moth in the new field guide, probably because it is so unusual and pretty looking for a moth.  It resembles a beetle, possibly a defense from predators, because beetles are foul-tasting, although I haven't tried eating them.  (I took this photo on  July 30, 2012 at my mother-in-law's house in Howard, Ohio.)

After receiving an unexpected free new field guide to moths of Ohio in the mail today, I'm getting fired up about photographing moths at my porch lights again.

I got it in the mail because I had failed to attend an Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) Division of Wildlife annual conference this month because of winter weather fears.

I've gotten much needed help from other of their field guides, all free, especially those on salamander and frogs, and butterflies.

This should help me suggest identifications for the moths I photograph and submit to the "Butterflies and Moths of North America" website, http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org.

There are over 3,000 known species of moths in Ohio.   Throughout the United States, you can assume each county has about 500 species.

Expanding to include Canada gives us nearly 10,500 known moth species.  To bring this into context, there are only 765 species of butterflies and about 765 birds in North America, above Mexico.  And moths outnumber butterflies 14 to 1 overall.  In Ohio, it's at least 20 to 1.