Help the noobie

[cabintom]

Upon arriving in Africa about 4 months ago, I took up collecting butterflies and moths... and I am quickly realizing I have a lot to learn.

So a few questions, if you don't mind!

1) What constitutes "good data" when collecting?
    I'm currently recording:
    - location of capture. (though I'm not certain how specific I should be).
    - Approximate time of day/
    - Weather (sunny, cloudy, etc.)
    - Terrain/vegetation at site of capture.
    - General notes of the individual's behaviour. (ie. "Perched on plant in vegetable garden.", "Mud puddling at road side.")

2) What are some general attributes I can use to distinguish between sexes of a species?
   
I know some species have different colouration and patterning that help distinguish, but, say with Nymphalidae, how do I differentiate easily?

3) Is there any "authority" or perhaps society to whom I should be reporting my data?
   
There doesn't seem to be too much information about butterflies specifically from Eastern DRC, so if I can contribute in any way... that  would be cool. In 4 months of collecting, in my spare time, I believe I've captured nearly 80 different species from in and around the city alone... and some of these aren't lining up with the information that I've found on the internet. (For example, the flight times I've read for Neptis serena say they fly in January and between April and October, but I'm fairly certain - several Neptis species here are quite similar - that I've caught a couple individuals earlier this month.)

Any other advice or tips you could give would also be appreciated! I've really enjoyed "lurking" on this forum and learning from everything you all are posting.

Tom (located in the city of Bunia, Ituri region, DRC)

[homard]

Dec 20, 2013 20:51:45 GMT -8 cabintom said:

Upon arriving in Africa about 4 months ago, I took up collecting butterflies and moths... and I am quickly realizing I have a lot to learn.

2) What are some general attributes I can use to distinguish between sexes of a species?
   
I know some species have different colouration and patterning that help distinguish, but, say with Nymphalidae, how do I differentiate easily?

Tom (located in the city of Bunia, Ituri region, DRC)

Tom,
Sorry for my brief reply, I'm limited in time.
The most important now, your question 2)

Pay attention at the abdomen's end. Males has got there two claspers (valvae), between which
there is a copulative apparatus. Sometimes they are retracted into the abdomen,
so you need to squeeze them. Female has not such structures at all. With some practice, you'll
learn to differentiate a sexes without mistakes even when they are very similar by size and coloration.

Good luck,
Alex

[admin]

The most important data is:

- Location caught (as specific as possible. Adding GPS coordinates is highly desired by collectors and researchers and may be a more efficient way to designate the location in remote regions.)

- Date caught

Time of day, weather, terrain are also valuable but probably will not fit onto a small data label if you are going to pin the specimens. If you are going to package or paper the specimens then by all means include all the notes you can if you have room to write it on the envelope. If you don't want to do this then all the secondary info should be recorded in a journal of some kind for reference. But again the absolute minimum data is Location and Date.

The Latin name of the species should go on the label or envelope somewhere if you know it with certainty. But even this is not as important as Location and Date, as species determination can be made later.

[jshuey]

The thing I most wish was on data labels, is the "best guess at habitat type" (aka biotope as Europeans refer to it). It doesn't have to be a technical description of habitat, but terms like "rd thru primary forest", "swamp forest", open grassland, savanna, swamp, etc, disturbed forest, pasture, and so on, will really help people who use the specimens in the future. Especially in developing countries, where your forest of today is likely to become an agricultural field 50 years from now, it helps nail down what habitats the bugs were using when you found them.

John

[cabintom]

Dec 21, 2013 13:28:00 GMT -8 jshuey said:

The thing I most wish was on data labels, is the "best guess at habitat type" (aka biotope as Europeans refer to it). It doesn't have to be a technical description of habitat, but terms like "rd thru primary forest", "swamp forest", open grassland, savanna, swamp, etc, disturbed forest, pasture, and so on, will really help people who use the specimens in the future. Especially in developing countries, where your forest of today is likely to become an agricultural field 50 years from now, it helps nail down what habitats the bugs were using when you found them.

John

I've been trying to record data of that sort... though I must admit I'm having some difficulty. The city where I live is basically a large conglomeration of houses, empty lots (fields grown wild or groups of usually less than 10 trees), or farmed plots. So when I capture a butterfly near my home, the data I record usually ends up something along the lines of, "yard, in shade of trees" or "perched on plant in vegetable garden" or "amongst cornstalks next to wooded area". Perhaps these are a bit too specific. Outside the city, describing the habitat is quite a bit easier.

Anyways, until I get myself some display cases built (I'm storing my collection in what amounts to tupperware) this is how I'm recording data:

[oehlkew]

If you are collecting at night and encounter any Saturniidae, I can probably help you with identifications of those.
Another piece of data that can be very useful is elevation in meters above sea level.
When working with moths, sometimes it is useful to record the time of night when they appear at your light. Date and location, as already mentioned, are quite important. If you have spread the specimens, the wingspan from wing tip to wing tip can be very useful, when the forewing inner margin is perpendicular to the body.

Bill Oehlke

[cabintom]

Dec 22, 2013 15:36:35 GMT -8 oehlkew said:

If you are collecting at night and encounter any Saturniidae, I can probably help you with identifications of those.

Thanks!!! Collecting at night is near impossible here in the city due to security concerns and a usual lack of electricity, but as I type this I'm waiting for the sky to brighten up enough to be able to go check if anything was attracted to the lights of a small office building here on the property. I haven't managed to catch much this way (perhaps obviously) but it is fun to see if anything is sitting there.

Tom

[jshuey]

The photo below represents the worst case scenario for poor data collection, and is a case study on why good data can be important on such a mundane looking specimen.

The bug is Euphyes ampa Evans, and is the rarest species in the genus. Evans described it from a pair of specimens from Honduras which was (and probably still is) the complete holdings of the British Museum of Natural History (you can see the types at butterfliesofamerica.com/L/t/Euphyes_ampa_a.htm). Olaf Mielke revised the genus in the late 70's, and the only specimen he had access to is the "Belize"-bug below. When I worked on a phylogeny for the genus, I could not locate any specimens of the species in North American Museums. Zero...

Since then it has turned up in Campeche (specimen figured on the link above) another one from Belize, and apparently Nicaragua. So - probably less that 10 specimens known, and the only one that I know of that has a hint about the habitat types the species occurs in is the one I managed to collect in Belize several years ago. Because I'm obsessed with understanding the butterflies of Belize, their habitats and distribution in the country, this lack of data is very frustrating. The habitat I turned it up in is was "Yucatan seasonally dry karst forest", which only occurs in a very small corner of Belize and possibly at the site of "Tona, Campeche" - (another classic case of terrible data - I can find no such place name on the web). Honduras and Nicaragua do not support this habitat type, and the skipper must use some other habitat in these countries.

So here you have a species endemic to a very small portion of Central America, where the only hint of habitat (and by inference, it's real distribution) is based on the single bug with decent data.

As a complete aside, I thought I took another ampa in October, and but I was completely bummed out when I spread it - Euphyes penia - which is still a great bug but it is no ampa.

[Deleted]

As data labels are quite small, therefore only a certain amount of data can be recorded, I advocate the use of a notebook where all other data relating to a particular specimen can be recorded, keep the notebook with the collection it refers to at all times so they are not separated and that someone looking at your collection for the first time can easily cross reference information, a very underestimated tool a notebook and pencil.