How to report/record state records?

[LEPMAN]

Hi all, recently I’ve found a moth Hypocala andremona in Indiana. It’s been found all around the state but no records from Indiana from what I could find. This raised the question how does one go about reporting a new state record find? Or is there such a thing?

[livingplanet3]

Oct 26, 2021 14:09:57 GMT -8 LEPMAN said:

Hi all, recently I’ve found a moth Hypocala andremona in Indiana. It’s been found all around the state but no records from Indiana from what I could find. This raised the question how does one go about reporting a new state record find? Or is there such a thing?

BugGuide is a popular resource -

bugguide.net/node/view/15740

bugguide.net/node/view/55766

[jhyatt]

The Lepidopterists' Society annual Field Season Summary would be a suitable venue also.

jh

[exoticimports]

This whole topic has been bugging me. If we had time to enter data into ONE records platform, which one?

LepSoc is probably the oldest. INaturalist has a
Great interface, and is global. Buttefliesandmoths is vetted, which actually is a PITA because I’m not going to take photos of known species, even if they are new local records. Big guide I don’t know well.

So which one? I’ll do one, not two, four, or ten.

[coloradeo]

If you get it into the LepSoc Season Summary, they get loaded to SCAN-BUGS database (by Chris) so the records can be easily "researched". I use the Scan-Bugs database all the time when planning collecting trips.

[vabrou]

Lepman: Your question is that as many novices ask on this topic. I find that there is one major misunderstanding noted in your question. Identifying a species taxonomically correct is not an exercise that just anyone can do accurately, and for someone who has no history or expertise in this subject is often an impossible mission. If you are the sort that thinks one can look at an unconfirmed image found on the web with a species name listed for it, and compare it to the specimen you have, then reconsider that you may well later wish you hadn't been so sure of the ID claimed of your particular specimen. Though, if it looks like a duck (H. andremona), flies like a duck, then it is probably a duck (andremona). There are other species of Hypocala in the world. After all this species is well documented in scientific literature and known to occur from Canada to Brazil and everything in between most probably, at least in large geographical areas where the larval foodplant especially occurs abundantly. I mentioned in my publication that there were many US states not having this species confirmed in literature or elsewhere.
By the way, back in 2005 I published on Hypocala andremona in Louisiana. The freely accessible link to that one page species account documenting 87 adults captured in Louisiana: www.lsuinsects.org/people/vernonbrou/pdf/2005.%20113.%20Hypocala%20andremona%20%28Cramer%29%20in%20Louisiana.%20So.%20Le.pdf


Your second major misunderstanding is that documenting your discoveries on ever fleeting and every changing websites actually has some lasting scientific value. I too was one of the earliest contributors to the majority of North American based entomological websites illustrating images and data. I even helped create some of these websites. These websites and related matters rapidly turned to the opposite of their initial purported purposes. Once you submit an image on the web, you have now lost all control to that image forever. Persons, nefarious and those of upright standing and professionalism can and do take your images and do anything they care too with them without your approval, no matter what you do to alleviate those events. Copyrights and ownership are worthless globally. Most of the websites I contributed to decades back have long disappeared, including the tens and hundreds of thousands of records like yours, gone forever and for good.

It is fine that you want to document your captures, but to have purpose, meaning and permanence, do it in future locatable and tangible scientific literature. It is not expensive to publish these things in print just approach these subjects in a meaningful way e.g. Over my lifetime, I have published 436 scientific entomological investigations involving thousands of insect species. For more than 95% of these publications it has cost me about $25.00 a year regardless of the number of manuscripts submitted including species accounts, new species descriptions, generic revisions, state and regional records, on and on. This is the format I chose to leave as a legacy, available to subsequent readers and researchers of the future generations and centuries. Over the past two decades, I have made nearly all of my (436) publications (1970-2021) freely available to the 200 countries of the world via the web. And to my surprise my publications have been downloaded by persons in over 140 countries of the world (and including all 50 states, all Canadian provinces).

Saying all that, the sites mentioned above by others are good suggestions today, more or less. I give you a bit more about all websites that you don’t personally own, your images can be misused, changed, removed, deleted, renamed, on and on and on, even decades after you are no longer with the living. I have often had this philosophical discussion over the years. One of my favorite examples, of thousands I have found backing up my arguments is: there was for more than a decade, a page on Moth Photographers Group (currently the best moth site worldwide illustrating correctly determined moth species). That one particular page had 14 color images of one particular moth species. The problem was not one image of that 14 on that page was actually the species named. But, it appears that all 14 images illustrated were actually each representative of 14 different other similar looking species. I helped start that site (MPG) begun by Bob Patterson nearly two decades back, when he took up photographing moths and other insects found in his back yard during his retirement years. I have subsequently removed over 200 important images owned by me on that particular site because of several untenable events, e.g. Patterson took thousands of my data and published them on the MPG group site without receiving my permission to do so, and all of those records remained on that website, unconfirmed to this very day. Also, a good number of the images I submitted to Patterson were actual 'TYPE' and 'Paratype' images. Patterson allowed others to change the identifications of the TYPE specimens to species they were not. He had no concept of taxonomy, nor rules of the ICZN. I explained to him no one can change the name of TYPE specimens without published proof in reputable scientific literature. His answer to me was "I don't like controversy, and I don't want to offend anyone". My response to Patterson was "what about me, you are offending me, by allowing TYPE images of new species I personally discovered and subsequently described in scientific literature to incorrect names?" That is when I realized my futile folly, and chose never again to waste my remaining fleeting lifetime with meaningless foolishness. I realized then, that ‘I can’t ‘FIX STUPID’.

Caveat emptor!! In this case Latin tweeked a bit to ‘let the bug identifier beware’. Consider also that the persons who are actually noted lifetime taxonomists do not actively participate in most all of these numerous bug identification websites. Why, you may ask. Well because, sort of like calling the IRS and asking 10 people there the exact same question and receiving 10 different answers.

To answer Lepman, iNat is a good choice because the images have pin label data (dates and locations) that accompany the image and the viewer can easily access and see that actual specimens incorrectly or correctly determined along with the pertinate basic data. Consider, any taxonomist is not necessarily a knowledgeable taxonomist. Persons familiar with my past entomological work know that we have personally operated 450-500 insect traps in my state of Louisiana, 24 hours of every day/night for the past 52 years., and most of our publications have first time documented most of the over 3,000 species of moths and many other insects occurring in the state. My wife and I have accomplished these things together and we have personally discovered over 400 species of moths new to science, though note we stopped counting new species about 15 years ago. Vernon Antoine Brou Jr. and Charlotte Dozar Brou, Abita Springs, Louisiana, USA [e-mail]

[exoticimports]

Wow, Vernon, you have been silent a long time!

Vernon makes some good points, particularly concerning websites. They can, and do, disappear. Gone for good. Or, they can change the plan and suddenly the data disappears, or is behind a paywall- Photobucket is the best example, when millions of reference images on tens of thousands of websites suddenly went blurry.

The quality of determination is poor on websites (crowd source from idiots, get idiot identification.) iNaturalist is probably the worst of the mis-ID. That said, professional publications aren't anywhere near perfect, as a recent critique in LepSoc absolutely shredded another paper on Speyeria. And then there's old lazy Bernie D'Abrera who misidentified all sorts of species.

As Vernon implied, you can publish now in LepSoc for $25 a page, and one page should be sufficient for a state record. I'm guessing that you'd also have to report it to Season Summary. Season Summary is the fast, easy, free way. Whether you want to become a published entomologist for $25 or not is up to you.

Again, Vernon it's nice to see you here again.

Chuck

[vabrou]

Chuck,
Clarification: My $25.00 was an entire year's membership dues for being a Society member of the Southern Lepidopterists Society which publishes four full color quality +/- 100 pages each quarterly issue, professionally bound. That same amount whether I submit no pages for publication or 100 pages of manuscripts for publication. Members can freely publish in the quarterly newsletter. I have been a charter member for the past 43 years. Also am a Lepidopterists Society member since 1968, but those dues and journal and newsletter page charges are much more expensive and in recent years color page charges were astronomical.

For example in So. Lep. Soc:
2018 we published 15 entomological research articles
2019 we published 16 entomological research articles
2020 we published 7 entomological research articles
2021 we published 20 entomological research articles

That is 58 entomological publications (143 printed pages) in 16 newsletters = our direct total publishing cost including postage $100.00 Here is an example of one of our 2019 publications, link:
www.academia.edu/39672083/THE_GENUS_CALLOSAMIA_PACKARD_LEPIDOPTERA_SATURNIDAE_IN_LOUISIANA

As you mention about iNat, yes as are many of the others, lots of misdeterminations. Only a few months ago on iNat I looked at a common butterfly in Louisiana and among more than 1000 determinations for this common species within Louisiana listed as Research Grade (inferring accurate identification), not a single one was taxonomically correct. I never take anyone's word about these matters from any X-purt. I investigate these matters myself. That is how among our hundreds of publications I have gone behind the X-purts and discovered and described numerous dozens of new previously unrecognized species. Only you yourself are the real Experts.

I have been busy collecting and researching and publishing, getting difficult doing this 24 hours daily nonstop for 52 years, now in our 70s. Among our recent projects included finishing up a 26-month research project last year in NW Louisiana running hundreds of clearwing moth traps 24 hours daily. Most sesiids are diurnal, but some appear to be nocturnal in activities and flights. Here at our home we have captured at least 30 species of clearwing moths using our high-wattage light traps. Regarding clearwing moths we personally captured over 400,000 adult moths over the past half century, most from here at our home location in SE Louisiana.

Vernon