Journal archives for August 2020

August 1, 2020

What a pace!

Who knew mothing would become so popular? July is generally the peak month for moth observations in Ontario and there were a record 46,288 observations added to the Moths of Ontario project in July. To put that in perspective, the number of monthly observations in July for each of the last 3 years was (rounded):
July 2017 - 3,700
July 2018 - 11,000
July 2019 - 24,400

So records basically tripled from 2017 to 2018, then more than doubled in 2019, and have almost doubled again in 2020. Phenomenal.

National Moth Week also appears to be a success with 16,300 records so far, averaging 2,000+ per day. I suspect that more observations will be added over time if others, like me, still have photos to post from that week.

One by-product of the massive increase in records is that it may take some time for your observations to be confirmed. Remember, this is a volunteer, peer-resourced site, so please take a little time to 'pay it forward' and add some IDs to other people's observations if you have a few moments.

Posted on August 1, 2020 05:48 PM by dkaposi dkaposi | 1 comment | Leave a comment

August 15, 2020

The Pleasures of Moth Watching

The NY Times published an article this week on starting out as a moth watcher, and the link to citizen science (you may need to log in to read, but it should be accessible for free):

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/realestate/moth-watching-night-garden.html

As a reminder, your photos on iNat are also used to create data for the Ontario Moth Atlas, which is up to 62,000 records covering seven major families: Saturniidae, Sphingidae, most Erebidae (genus Catocala, Notodontidae and Arctiinae), Lasiocampidae, Hepialidae and Apatelodidae.

A little over half of the current Atlas data comes from iNaturalist records. The Atlas also includes institutional specimen records from the Canadian National Collection, the Royal Ontario Museum and the BOLD (Barcode of Life Datasystems) project of the University of Guelph, as well as other museums in Noth America and Europe. BugGuide and BAMONA records are also included, as are records submitted directly to the TEA by various observers.

Posted on August 15, 2020 04:56 PM by dkaposi dkaposi | 0 comments | Leave a comment