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Post by jshuey on Jan 12, 2016 6:47:41 GMT -8
So..., I have to say that I don't get it. I've been aggressively collecting bugs since 1976, and I have never once been approached by anyone hostile to my activities. Never! I've had people try and get me to pay them for collecting on "their land" (which typically is not their land) - or even more often, could I pay them to collect, but never anything hostile. I have people wondering if I'm finding anything cool. I have people yelling at me to "come and look at this one". I have people ask if I have a business card so that they can contact me with questions (the answer to that one is typically - oops, I must have forgotten them).
I'd suggest not going to the only well known spot in the region to collect some rare species. Or avoid collecting along well used public trails. Find new locations for your bugs - I mean, isn't that what we claim as one of the justifications for collecting - finding and documenting the real distribution of species? (versus getting yet another dead bug from the same spot that people have been collecting it from for the last 20+ years?)
And always make sure that the land owner knows that you are "onsite and working" to avoid other unpleasant interactions.
John
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Post by rayrard on Jan 12, 2016 9:16:19 GMT -8
When taking friends out or pursuing a species for the first time, I usually try and find a historical locality to try and get a voucher for my personal collection. I don't collect more than necessary, and only a small series if the species is common enough there. Subsequently, I take one as a locality record and move on.
It's a waste of time pursuing target species and going into green territory. Most likely you will not find your target. I am all in favor of going into such territory on "regular trips" with no targets as you can get lucky and find a honeyhole, but when I'm targeting a species I go to where it's been seen before. Like it's a bad idea to go to Mt Greylock for Early Hairstreak, but there are so many Beech woods in CT where you will never find Erora. So you have to go somewhere else and hope you get lucky. Same as you may find Hoary, Green, and Gray Commas all through the Canadian zone forests of the northeast, but I went to the usual spots in Coos Co., NH as I was guaranteed return for my 6 hour drive.
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Post by jshuey on Jan 12, 2016 12:04:01 GMT -8
I think Rayrard sums up exactly why I've never collected Erora laeta. I've never gone to "the spots" but I've looked a lot for the species. The flip side is that I have nailed all the Polygonia. But again, by looking for bugs based on what I know of their habitat requirements - not by going to "the spot". It was a complete thrill when I found these on my own. And when Erora laeta falls into my grasp, it will be a huge thrill as well.
And I've never been harassed by people who think I'm a butterfly murderer.
John
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Post by jhyatt on Jan 12, 2016 17:43:51 GMT -8
I can't say that I've ever been harassed by anyone for killing bugs. I've been made fun of a time or two, and had some really nice encounters, even gotten thrown out of a place or two by rangers (once legitimately, once wrongly by an ignorant ranger) - but never told that I was a heartless killer.
John - I once (April 1979) pulled a still-alive E. laeta male out of a spider web on a dirt road in Tennessee. Went back a week later, caught a couple of females. Then they paved the road and all the leps seemed to disappear. Never did reappear, and I've looked plenty of times. But finding that E. laeta spot was about the coolest thing I ever ran across while collecting!
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Post by beetlehorn on Jan 12, 2016 20:17:48 GMT -8
I couldn't have said it better jshuey. I am always looking for new out-of-the-way locations to collect. The more remote the better for many reasons. One thing I have noticed that is nearly an unfailing occurrence is that when I go to a new place I usually find something I have never collected before, and never expected to see. At times I encounter a species that isn't supposed to be there according to field guides. These surprises are totally unexpected, and can really lift not only my spirits, but also anyone collecting with me. It is always more meaningful to me that there is another collector there to share it with. In regards to harassment.....well I have a few interesting stories, but nothing I couldn't handle at the time. Those remote, out of the way places are the best ways to avoid unpleasant events such as harassment as you mentioned. Tom
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Post by exoticimports on Jan 13, 2016 6:22:36 GMT -8
I do not see why you have to kill every moth in a trap in North America. Not only will you diminish numbers of rare and common species in the area where the traps are used, you are taking away a vital food source for insect eating bats. While this may seem to be common logic, one must ask if it is reality. If the traps truly did have such a detrimental impact, it would destroy the population(s) local to the trap(s) and the trapper would obviously notice this. Much more detrimental is the wholesale destruction of natural habitat via human habitat expansion. So far as bats, they are rather specific to what they will eat. There are species that are too large, and others that the bats, for whatever reason, will not take. Individual bats also range over an area larger than a trap can cover. Furthermore, it is my experience that bats will employ the traps for their own gain- so if the trap is drawing insects the bats are realizing greatly increased efficiency, not starving. On it's face your argument has emotional appeal, but does not withstand scrutiny.
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leptraps
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Post by leptraps on Jan 13, 2016 8:36:30 GMT -8
I have no problem with the use of bait traps, light traps and pheromone traps to collect insects. I could not make enough light traps to even slightly dent the insect population. Maybe by .0000001%
Just a thought, forget habitat loss, how many vehicles are in the USA. 16,000,000 give or take 100K. If each vehicle killed a thousand insects a year. That's a few billion bugs. Throw in pesticides, bug zappers, ariel spraying or fogging for mosquitoes and insect traps used in restaurants, grocery stores and anywhere that food is prepared, processed, stored or served. That number jumps to 31,000,000,000,000. That numbers could be off by 50% or more.
Everyone on this list, just by driving there vehicle kills more bus per year than the four light traps I may use 20 nights per year.
Vernon Brous traps do not even scratch the surface.
And I did not mention all the creatures that prey on insects, including other insects.
Have I made my point?
Working out all these numbers has worn me out.
TIME FOR A NAP........
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Post by jshuey on Jan 13, 2016 9:16:50 GMT -8
I’m on a conference call and bored – so I’m typing this. I’ll try and be a bit provocative.
First, no one can argue that killing a bug is good for the species. You can only argue that it has a negligible negative impact. That impact increases as more and more of the population is killed without reproducing.
Second, I have repeatedly witnessed the impact of my own collecting on very local populations over short time spans. I’ll give a couple of examples from Central America.
1- Years ago I was on a trail in Chiapas, and male Battus lycidas were seemingly common zooming up and down the trail. I figured out how to position myself so that I could catch them on he wing. As it turns out – there were apparently 4 male Battus lycidas flying up and down the trail, and I caught them. I was at this site for the entire week, and never saw another specimen of the species in the entire area.
2- Last summer, we were a team of three and collecting a short road up a hillside in Belize. We encountered Prothecla porthura – a new country record. We collected about 8 specimens over 2 consecutive days – and did not see the bug again for the rest of the week.
So – in both cases, I have no doubt that we had no impact on regional populations (or more correctly I had negligible negative impact - right?). But in both cases, it seems that there was something special about the sites I collected that attracted these particular species to the spot I was working – most likely the open trail itself through otherwise dense forest. And by collecting just a few bugs, I made these species become locally absent on subsequent days.
Now multiply this by billions and billions and billions, and the argument gets a bit more strained.
John
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Post by jhyatt on Jan 13, 2016 14:52:24 GMT -8
Ah yes, but John - failure to see other specimens doesn't constitute proof of their absence. Isn't it likely that there were female lycidas somewhere nearby, but too reclusive to turn up on your trail? I'd submit that you appeared to catch all the males that had the habit of frequenting the trail you sampled - but whether you depopulated the immediate area seems an open question to me.
Cheers, John
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Post by jshuey on Jan 14, 2016 7:29:35 GMT -8
Ah yes, but John - failure to see other specimens doesn't constitute proof of their absence. Isn't it likely that there were female lycidas somewhere nearby, but too reclusive to turn up on your trail? I'd submit that you appeared to catch all the males that had the habit of frequenting the trail you sampled - but whether you depopulated the immediate area seems an open question to me. Cheers, John Hi John, Indeed - I set this story stating that I took all the males. And finished it by saying that I think I had "negligible negative impact - right?". So I want to continue down the provocative path…. (Nothing personal – just you were the first to respond!) Here's the flaw in the argument that we collectors make and you point right at it. To paraphrase and twist your statement above - the failure to see evidence of impacts does not constitute evidence of no impact. So that's the flaw I see in these types of arguments - I killed a bunch of insects, but yet there are still insects, therefore I didn't impact insects. We defend ourselves by saying that collecting does not hurt any populations of insects – but then we use the absence of data to support our position. Show me a single, controlled experiment that demonstrates that artificially increasing mortality in one population does not increase the probability of extinction in an identical population that had no similar artificial increase in mortality. There are none. However, there is a cottage industry that has sprung up around modeling such stressors on populations – called population viability analysis (PVA for short). Agencies pay big bucks for consultants to identify how best to manage the balance between mortality and natality in endangered species (and species of economic concern as well). I can tell you right of the top of my head, that killing individuals at any life stage except post reproduction has some level of negative impact on the probability of population persistence. Depending on the species (like for insects) – it might be a very small negative impact – but negative non-the-less. But it doesn’t take a computer model to understand this. I mean – isn’t that why we get defensive about it? Don’t we claim somewhere above in this thread that the “watchers” have more of a negative impact by driving their cars around than we do (of course, this implies that we walked 25 miles to get to the site, because then we’d have to acknowledge that the bugs we collected add to that carnage we just blamed them for). So it’s a slippery slope when we make claims such as “ If anything, Mr. Brou's studies have shown that even super-heavy collecting of insects in one particular region will not cause the extinction of any of them” because we simply don’t know what the situation would like if he had not killed all those bugs. Think about how we flip the argument towards “bugs killed on car radiators” – then try and imagine how many miles you have to drive to hit the “billions and billions” mark. So back to the story I constructed above. I apparently collected all the males of Battus lycidas that were using a trail – probably as a preferred mating site. Did that cause any females to go unmated? I have no idea. But all I can say for sure is that the males seemed common before I killed them (obviously because these four males were really active along this one small stretch of trail), and after that, I saw no more males even though I probably spent over 20 hours over the rest of the week at this same spot. Despite the fact that my own observations point towards a negative impact, I’m still willing to claim that “I don’t think I had one”. This is the very flawed argument that we as collectors use over and over and over again. I’m as guilty as anyone. So except under very unusual circumstances, I don’t ever make this argument. I bring it up here because I want this community to understand that it doesn’t take a genius to find the logical fallacy behind it. And yet we just go around flaunting the death count as if it were worth bragging about. It is not. It may be necessary to achieve certain outcomes or to understand certain taxonomic relationships. The results may (or may not) justify the potential impacts. Just as likely it satisfies some personal egotistical need (I happen to like those four Battus lycidas pined up in my unit tray). But anytime you allow yourself to get sucked into a “killing insects has no negative impact” argument, you have already lost the argument. John
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Post by papiliotheona on Jan 14, 2016 14:39:31 GMT -8
Indeed - I set this story stating that I took all the males. And finished it by saying that I think I had "negligible negative impact - right?". So I want to continue down the provocative path…. (Nothing personal – just you were the first to respond!) Here's the flaw in the argument that we collectors make and you point right at it. To paraphrase and twist your statement above - the failure to see evidence of impacts does not constitute evidence of no impact. So that's the flaw I see in these types of arguments - I killed a bunch of insects, but yet there are still insects, therefore I didn't impact insects. We defend ourselves by saying that collecting does not hurt any populations of insects – but then we use the absence of data to support our position. Show me a single, controlled experiment that demonstrates that artificially increasing mortality in one population does not increase the probability of extinction in an identical population that had no similar artificial increase in mortality. There are none. However, there is a cottage industry that has sprung up around modeling such stressors on populations – called population viability analysis (PVA for short). Agencies pay big bucks for consultants to identify how best to manage the balance between mortality and natality in endangered species (and species of economic concern as well). I can tell you right of the top of my head, that killing individuals at any life stage except post reproduction has some level of negative impact on the probability of population persistence. Depending on the species (like for insects) – it might be a very small negative impact – but negative non-the-less. But it doesn’t take a computer model to understand this. I mean – isn’t that why we get defensive about it? Don’t we claim somewhere above in this thread that the “watchers” have more of a negative impact by driving their cars around than we do (of course, this implies that we walked 25 miles to get to the site, because then we’d have to acknowledge that the bugs we collected add to that carnage we just blamed them for). So it’s a slippery slope when we make claims such as “ If anything, Mr. Brou's studies have shown that even super-heavy collecting of insects in one particular region will not cause the extinction of any of them” because we simply don’t know what the situation would like if he had not killed all those bugs. Think about how we flip the argument towards “bugs killed on car radiators” – then try and imagine how many miles you have to drive to hit the “billions and billions” mark. So back to the story I constructed above. I apparently collected all the males of Battus lycidas that were using a trail – probably as a preferred mating site. Did that cause any females to go unmated? I have no idea. But all I can say for sure is that the males seemed common before I killed them (obviously because these four males were really active along this one small stretch of trail), and after that, I saw no more males even though I probably spent over 20 hours over the rest of the week at this same spot. Despite the fact that my own observations point towards a negative impact, I’m still willing to claim that “I don’t think I had one”. This is the very flawed argument that we as collectors use over and over and over again. I’m as guilty as anyone. So except under very unusual circumstances, I don’t ever make this argument. I bring it up here because I want this community to understand that it doesn’t take a genius to find the logical fallacy behind it. And yet we just go around flaunting the death count as if it were worth bragging about. It is not. It may be necessary to achieve certain outcomes or to understand certain taxonomic relationships. The results may (or may not) justify the potential impacts. Just as likely it satisfies some personal egotistical need (I happen to like those four Battus lycidas pined up in my unit tray). But anytime you allow yourself to get sucked into a “killing insects has no negative impact” argument, you have already lost the argument. John John-- I'll concede that you make a legitimate argument--but I'll argue that if an entity was really weak/limited/scarce enough that one recreational guy with a net or caterpillar container is truly able to wreck a population, it deserved *not* to be protected in any way. If any little extra increase in mortality will push it over the edge, it was not doing so well to begin with. A single boom year of parasites, an extra-heavy bird migration through an area (yeah, I know Parides are supposed to be protected from predation by their toxicity, but surely some birds have developed resistance to the aristolochine toxins in them), an extra-damp cold spring that facilitated a disease outbreak, etc.--can do far more harm than us. We forget oftentimes that for all but a few species, the insects have every possible advantage over us. A man with a net is a very inefficient and limited predator. They can fly to get away from us--crossing massive ravines, vanishing to the tops of treetops, entering impenetrable brush, going out over water. Larvae are another story, but most of the time they are hard to find. Predatory and parasitic insects and birds are far better equipped to do damage to populations than us (unless we are wrecking habitat).
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Post by jhyatt on Jan 15, 2016 6:38:12 GMT -8
John, Your points are well put indeed, and I think we're in agreement. The basic problem is, as you say, that there is no real data on the long-term impact of collecting - and as a practical matter, it'd probably be impossible to get solid data. As a physical scientist by training and profession, I'm always skeptical of using computer models to "prove" one thing or the other, PVA being a good example (and don't even get me started on "metaanalysis" of data from unrelated studies!). Give me read hard data from properly controlled experiments, though, and I'll believe whatever they say. But biological systems are just too individually variable and subject to too many influences to make doing solid experiments possible, so we're stuck. As you essentially point out, in the absence of data, arguments pro or con collecting impacts will always be just guesses.
In the meantime, if someone asks me why I have a long series of something, my answer is "because I choose to do so." 'Nuff said.
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Post by jshuey on Jan 15, 2016 9:04:25 GMT -8
In the meantime, if someone asks me why I have a long series of something, my answer is "because I choose to do so." 'Nuff said. John - In my mind - that's a solid enough answer. For our work in Latin America - the one I give most often is "because I'm not smart enough to separate all these similar species in the field". The only bragging about "big numbers" I've ever done is the running joke that "we might have the longest series of Hermeuptychia hermes in the World". (the inside joke being that this is perhaps the most common species throughout Latin America, but is probably made up of several unrecognized species - so we always take a short series when we see it - which is always...) John
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Post by jhyatt on Jan 15, 2016 10:16:54 GMT -8
John,
My old friend Ulf Eitschberger once wrote, probably only partly tongue-in-cheek, "Ein Serie niemals zu lange seit!" I kinda tend to agree, but I must admit I can't seem to find a single example of that new species in my moderate-sized run of Georgia satyrs... and there's the new cresphontes look-alike, too...
Cheers, jh
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Post by joee30 on Jan 15, 2016 14:57:06 GMT -8
I have not put anywhere that I thought I was better than watchers or birders. I kill enough bugs during collecting season that keep me busy during the lull of winter. Out of all the bugs killed, and depending on the availability of said bugs, I catch 6-12 if very common. If somewhat common, 6-8, uncommon, 4-5, so on, sp forth. Depending on what gets caught, I keep a pair or a couple, if they were common, I'd keep some for exchanges/trades, and the red go to the museum I work at.
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