To reignite the Monday Moth series here is a stunner: Melemaea magdalena (Geometridae).
This rare beauty has previously only been known from scattered localities across the mountain west and only from a few individuals every other season. That is until Denver Museum volunteer Barbara Bartell began inventorying moths on her property near Golden Gate Canyon State Park in the Rocky Mountain front range. Over 8,000′ these moths turn out to be a regular visitor at her cabin blacklight and we now have the largest series known of this stunning species (and all perfectly curated!).
Leave it to Denver to combine two things perfect for this blog – entomology and skepticism! If you haven’t seen these clips then take a second to watch the video above. At the very least this appears to be a real phenomenon, camera crews from the news station were able to record the very same effect. So what could they be?
I had an instantaneous recognition of what these UFOs were – flying insects, probably flies of some kind (디프테라) mating in the warm afternoon sun. It has been nice here in Denver and the hours around 1pm are always the warmest (strangely the same time the “UFOs” are most active). But it’s hard to tell with any degree of certainty what these objects are because of the way thatKDVR shows the clips. Odd angles, 2 second flashes, fast forward, super slow motion, super contrast… you only have fractions of a second to see the clip in real time. But when you do it seems so very obvious – and in my professional opinion – that these are insects.
Unfortunately they now have a quote from a Denver entomologist, Mary Ann Hamilton (misspelled as Mart on the KDVR website), saying these are not insects. Facepalm. I don’t know Mary and I certainly can’t blame her for being uncertain as to what these are after staring at the footage over and over and over again. In my opinion it was too hasty to rule out insects. Especially because once you enhance… enhance… 과 ENHANCEthe footage you being to lose all track of reality. The camera footage has recordedveryout of focus insects, and the very nature of optics means you have lost most of the information outside of the depth of field. And so enlarging and slowing down these images only makes this problem infinitely worse. The pixels become too large to render any meaningful information and an effect known aspareidoliastarts to kick in. Our brains start jumbling together often meaningless data into something recognizable. This is why people see a face on Mars, or rocket boosters coming out of the butts of these insects flying over Denver. And I don’t blame Mary for looking at some of these shiny objects whipping around in weird directions and not seeing insects. But perhaps KDVR could have requested an interview with someone at the Denver Museum (which they did not) – they would have been given an entomologist with much more field experience. I can’t say Mary is unqualified and I don’t mean any disrespect to her, but I don’t believe running a butterfly house is the same thing as being an active research entomologist.
This video is pretty excellent for explaining insect UFOs – although these are much larger insects than the ones captured above Denver.
And check out this cool video of a Syrphidae fly hovering in the sun – imagine these out of focus and hurtling around in front of the camera…
그 여름 확인에 의해 날아, 내가 정말되고 실업자를 인정해야, 정말로 쓰레기로 내 생산성을 설정. 그러나 좋은 소식은 내가 단지에서 곤충학에서 일자리를 덴버로 이전 한 것입니다 덴버 자연의 박물관과 과학! 나는 데이터베이스 화 작업과 절지 동물 네트워크의 사우스 웨스트 컬렉션을 위해 곤충을 촬영됩니다 (주사). 그것은 다시 일 할 좋은 있고 난에 앞으로 더 많은 블로그를 느낄 수있어… 이것은 미국에서 가장 놀라운 생태 지역 중 하나입니다 언급하지 않기. 이미 봄이 산을 활용하는 방법을 많이 음모를 꾸미고 있어요.
왜 창조 wackos의 거울을 통해 내 새로운 사무실의 짧은 여행을하지. 내가 과학에 대해 이야기 좋아하는 이유는 자신을 상기하는 것이 좋다.
Not an uncommon moth, but a distinguished looking one. 이다 Catocala ilia (Erebidae) ((formerly Noctuidae)), and it feeds on a handful of Oaks. It came into my light over the weekend in Southern Illinois, down in the Trail of Tears State Forest. As with so many other moths this widespread species has a number of variations which may turn out to be distinct – pending a monograph of the species…
I’ve now banked a handful of nice moth images so expect more Monday moths! (even though this is a Friday moth).
미국 동부 및 캐나다 대부분의 지역 뉴스가 펄럭이고있다 (이) recently with reports of the irruption of바네사 아 탈 란 – 레드 독 나비. 이것은 일반적인 현상이 나비는 미국 남부에서의 월동 근거에서 북쪽으로 이주마다 봄 동안, 올해의 순전한 숫자는 놀랍습니다. 우리 뒷마당에는 말 그대로 수천 명의 제독이 있습니다..
그래서 올해 달라진 점은?
따뜻한 봄 날씨에 대해 많은 추측이 있습니다. (여러 곳에서 기록상 가장 따뜻한 3월) 그리고 종종 일부 안락 의자 곤충학과 함께 갈 많은 잘못된 정보. 내가 만난 대부분의 뉴스 출처는 따뜻한 봄으로 인해 이 나비들이 비정상적인 숫자로 번성하고 번식할 수 있었다고 합니다.. 그러나 그것은 완전히 가능하지 않습니다, V. atalantaoverwinters as anadult. The southern states provide temps just warm enough for adultVanessabutterflies to hide in the fall and be the very first to awaken in the spring to get a jump start on mating. 2월에 나비가 깨어있어도 기주식물은 아직 자라지 않았다 (엉겅퀴); 우리 뒤뜰의 나비는 작년부터.
하지만 날씨가 이 붐 사이클에 역할을 한다면 어떨까요?? 작년은 우리의 아름답고 온화한 겨울이 있었던 라니냐의 해였습니다.. 1년 전은 엘니뇨, most of the eastern US was assaulted with winter and we suffered at the hands of the epic Chicago “snowpocalypse”. 아마도 이 조합은 인구 수를 충분히 감소시켰을 것입니다. 2010/2011 그러면 기생체 부하가 감소합니다., 여름에 더 큰 나비 번식력을 허용합니다. 2011. 월동하는 나비들에게는 겨울 사망률을 낮출 수 있는 따뜻한 겨울이 주어졌습니다.. As the butterflies moved north this spring there were no frosty nights to cut into populations – just lots of hungry birds. 결과는 이동하는 나비의 비정상적인 유입이 될 것입니다..
Today’s moth is an understated brown Crambidae, Loxostege brunneitincta. While this isn’t a particularly captivating moth it does have an interesting story that illustrates the need for scientific collections and museum loans. If you read the label image you will notice the moth was originally collected in 1927 by과. 피. Van Duzeein Truckee, 그. Van Duzee was a noted Hemipterist and a curator at the California Academy of Sciences for 24 years until his death in 1940. His collections of bugs (in the literal sense) alone totaled164,442 표본, and like many entomologists Van Duzee collected everything he came across and likely added another 100,000 specimens to the museum of groups he wasn’t even studying. And so this little brown moth remained in the CAS until the 1970’s whenEugene Munroeborrowed specimens for his work on the genusLoxostege.The resulting 1976 fascicle described this species as new to science and even used this specimen as an illustration in the book. If you’re unfamiliar with the term paratype it’s a specimen from the series (excluding the holotype) that was used to describe that species. And while this particular moth doesn’t seem to be abundant, the genus does have some more notorious pests like the southern beet and alfalfawebworms. More often than not the pets themselves are well known but the genera they belong to might be enigmatic. But thanks in part to Van Duzee and many entomologists like him, Munroe was able to assemble a collection of specimens that would have taken decades (if not longer) to gather. And only with a sufficient collection is a comprehensive assessment of species possible.
활발한에서 37 노던 일리노이에서 학위 아침 나는 나의 카메라를 털어과의 진행을 탐험하기로 결정 “봄”. I hitRollins Savanna Forest Preserveby 6:30에서, 시간에 맞춰 첫 번째 빛은 누덕 누덕 기운 서리를 녹여하려면. A week and a half ago temps were pushing the upper 80’s and summer felt in full swing. In typical Chicago fashion things didn’t last long, the weather returned to its fickle spring form with storms and (what now seemed like) bitter cold.
Despite a 3 hour hike I only came across one butterfly – a red admiral, 바네사 아 탈 란, and about a half-dozen dog ticks (Dermacentor sp.). Beggars can’t be choosers, there was hardly a single insect out. I might as well take photos of birds…
The very first and most abundant birds were the Tree Swallow, Tachycineta bicolor. These two were just greeting the dawn and stretching out their little legs. They seemed to be rather patient subjects, a good first-bird-to-ever-photograph!
A prairie isn’t complete without a chorus of Redwinged-Blackbirds.
Despite my best efforts this is one of the better Sandhill Crane images I could get. If you click through my Flickr set you’ll find one more, but sneaking up on them in the marsh was rather difficult. I don’t get birds yet…
This Coyote let me get pretty close, looks like they are fed well in suburbia.
Back to the Monday Moth! This beautiful insect isStiria dyari (밤나방과) collected on a February trip outside of Cataviña, Baja California Mexico. I believe the host plants are still unknown, but all of the moths in the genusStiriahave these brilliant yellow forewings that help camouflage them on the stem of a yellow flowered plant. 가 7 currently described species most of which are found in the SW United States and northern Mexico, 하지만 Stiria rugifronsmakes it into the great plains. All of the species have poorly defined and often overlapping ranges, not to mention the genitalia can highly variable. It’s very likely the final word has not been written about these beautiful noctuids quite yet.
Back from hiatus and back to the Genius of the Press insect-news-failure series! Fresh off the presses from last year, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the UK was shut down for a massive infestation of clothes moths. The picture shown here from“The Nation” story is a far cry from a proper clothes moth (Tineidae) – looks like a Noctuidae of some kind.
But it’s hard to blame them for getting this moth wrong when UK pest control companies don’t even know what a clothes moth is. Here isInstakil’s version 의 “the moth” that happens to be a Plusiinae noctuid.
And the winner for failed identification goes to this other UK company “Hawk Force“. Not even a moth – but a skipper butterfly!
