What Specimens are you preparing?

[leptraps]

I am currently mounting both Butterflies amd Moths from Clay Butte which is West of Cody, Wyoming. I spread eleven specimens of Erebia theano and fourteen specimens of Plusiinae: Syngrapha abstrusa, Autographa flavida (This is a scarce species and I only took one specimen while collecting butterflies along the edge of the Snow Cap). I also spread two specimens of Cissusa valens. These two moths are stunning. I collected one with a net on Rollins Pass and the other on Mount Evans, both in Colorado in 2017.

I also placed 25+ moths in my relaxer for Sunday. Tomorrow Saturday, more butterflies from Clay Butte and a couple of moths from Douglas Pass in Colorado.

I would like to spread several hundred moths from Clay Butte, Wyoming and Douglas Pass, Colorado over the next two or three weeks. Along with some specimens collected NE of Wall, South Dakota.

I must admit, I collected some incredible butterflies and Moths from the 2017 trip.

[bandrow]

Greetings,

How about some non-leps for a change? This is last night's work - an assortment of beetles from Sapelo Island, Georgia, from a light trap sample collected by James Adams this past summer. The upper row are cerambycids and the rest is mostly mixed species of Aphodiinae, little dung beetles. I've estimated that there are at least 16 species of aphodiines in this one sample.

The last 12 specimens in the bottom row is a series of a nice little metallic weevil, Tyloderma sp. If you look really close at the first specimen, you can see the dissected male genitalia mounted on the point beside the beetle.

imgur.com/CBzLi4u


Cheers!
Bandrow

[jhyatt]

Bob, Glad to hear you're progressing through more of the Sapelo stuff! We're only doing a limited number of visits there nowadays,
next trip will be in May.

Cheers,
jh

[bandrow]

Hi John,

Yep - I'm plugging away at it. I hit a wall with some samples James sent in July (collected 26-28 June) - one sample from the beach was a quart jar of mostly small stuff, and about a million cydnids! So far, that sample has produced nearly 800 specimens, with most species in a series of no more than 6, with a lot of ones and twos. Amazing diversity in that sample, and numerous new species records for the island.

I have two more samples from that trip of James's and then a couple from you in the freezer, and then LOTS of ID and data basing...

Cheers!
Bob

[jhyatt]

Nice to know that bugs are apparently doing OK at the beach on Sapelo... that area got seriously rearranged in the hurricane of '17.
Most of the dunes were leveled and the vegetation wiped away, or killed by salt water inundation. It's slowly coming back...
jh

[bandrow]

Hi John,

I remember you pointing out how the front dunes had been leveled due to that storm. On my last day there back in 2018, I went out onto the beach to look for Cicindela dorsalis, an almost pure-white tiger beetle that inhabits the open beach close to the water line, and got a few - so they weren't affected much. I also sifted sand for aphodiine scarabs in what had then become the new front dunes, but found nothing. But that could be a matter of timing, rather than them not being there - or they simply may not have been there in the first place.

Cheers!
Bob

[leptraps]

I got out with a net today. I took a nice series of Phyciodes tharos. I saw several Papilio troilus and Papilio glaucus. I also saw a Papilio polyxenes(??). Did not get close enough for a actual determination.


Have yet to see a Colias.

I continue to find overwintering Polygonia comma and Polygonia interrogationis in my Bait Traps. I also found several interesting moths, Anticarsia gemmatalis and Zale galbanata.

I also set out two Light Traps. Could prove to be interesting.

[Adam Cotton]

Is Papilio polymers P. polyxenes?

I recommend turning off the auto-spelling junk.

Adam.

[leptraps]

You type out the post, read it through, enter post. Then the spell checker kicks in. And spell checker does not like scientific names!

[kevinkk]

I've noticed spell check doesn't like Latin either, I'm always double checking spelling, I know it happens to everyone,
but spelling correctly is important to me. Sometimes I'll see a misspelled word someone's posted, and looking at the keyboard,
it's a case of limited light, typing too fast, Homer Simpson fingers, typing too early in the morning or late at night.

As far as my specimen mounting...not much. Just what is hatching from my cocoons, I save my extra specimens in the freezer for
some as yet unknown use down the road. The Oregon coast isn't providing much wild material, as usual, and collecting trips this
season are something I try not to think about.

[nomihoudai]

I hnkti htat hte osmt mprtnaiot htign si to vhae lal the etetsrl of a orwd. Veryhtnige lese si ptoinoal.

[leptraps]

Doekiokie.

And then of course there is "NARF"... And I spelled that correctly

[58chevy]

I agree with Claude. I like to spell things correctly (I was the spelling champion of my elementary school), but as long as all the letters are there, we can figure out what the word is in spite of Spelcheck (Did I spell that wrong?). By the way, I also noticed that Bluemoth's grammar & spelling have greatly improved. Maybe Leroy has an explanation for that.

[leptraps]

Blue Moth claimed that Big Foot was well endowed. I told Blue Moth that I could make Big Foot run for cover.

And Burger King got theirs great slogan from me: It takes two hands to handle the Whopper.

Yessirree Buffalo Bob!!!