Welcome to volume eight of the inconsistently reoccurring series, Genius of the Press. I came across this article recently regarding an endemic Puerto Rican butterfly. Who can tell me exactly why this report is misleading? It may be a little trickier than the standard GOP (I suggest discarding any previously associated acronyms with those letters)….
I’ve always wondered how to find the correct terminology for land cover in a given area. Usually, I just ballpark something along the lines of “oak chaparral”. But now I can use this awesome new map brought to us by the USGS/National Biological Information Infrastructure. The level of detail is amazing, and you can specify…
Welcome to The Moth and Me #12, and my first blog carnival. Despite blogging for a few months I have yet to take a look back and reflect on exactly how I became enamored with lepidoptera in the first place. Remembering a time or location where this happened is impossible, and like many of my…
This moth is just about as rare as its paranormal namesake (except that it’s real) – it’s a Gazoryctra sp. in the family Hepialidae. They represent a basal lineage of the Lepidoptera and are commonly known as ghost moths or swift moths. Ghost – because males of some species are known to fly in true…
Who can see what’s wrong with this article?
This recent article in the American Naturalist has taken a second look at some of the famously inflated species estimates, some going high as 100 million (Erwin, 1988). Estimates conducted by the authors indicate that projections above 30 million have probabilities of <0.00001. Their estimated range is more likely to be between 2.5 and 3.7 million…
Can’t find a way to link the direct video (not even VodPod), but here is the link to the Daily Show site. How many physicists pulled their hair out when they heard this one? Yikes, he is the newly appointed spokesman. Don’t worry Neil, you’re not going anywhere after this. Having not aired yet I…
If there is one thing that I learned in college, it was how to easily distract myself. I tend to keep my TV on in the background while I’m working on my computer, especially late at night when I am usually fighting a winning war against sleep. The other night something did catch my eye:…
Just a few images of common California leps, taken along the coast range near Santa Cruz a few weeks ago. Starting to work my way through some photo backlog… Euphydryas chalcedona Plebejus acmon Plebejus acmon Ethmia arctostaphylella on Eriodictyon sp. One interesting note on Ethmia arctostaphylella – the name is a misnomer, it does not…
For the rarely reoccurring quiz series, here is a new image. Who is this moth?