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Post by wollastoni on May 26, 2021 6:53:16 GMT -8
No reason to be depressed. :-)
It is an interesting topic but a dangerous topic also.
Do we want a National Geographic stupid article with title :"insect collectors declares killing millions of insects for their collection." And then "According to their own survey on Insectnet, the InsectNet members declare killing 1.000.000 insects per year..." "insect collectors are focusing on rare insects to complete their collection..." And then all the tree-huggers coming here to insult us.
So yes, this topic is interesting but dangerous...
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Post by nomihoudai on May 26, 2021 7:35:11 GMT -8
What is this forum about if we can't even go through this survey? It's sad to see neuroticism valued over curiosity. If at all it shows that we don't catch that much in the end. A lot of people here are professionals, so it is normal that their numbers are a bit higher.
The only thing enforced should be to not openly insulting others and staying away from non insect related topics for the most part.
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Post by wollastoni on May 26, 2021 7:51:27 GMT -8
Ok let’s keep it We will see
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Post by livingplanet3 on May 26, 2021 9:51:04 GMT -8
The number of insects that die every day due to predation, parasites, disease, weather, and a multitude of other natural factors is incomprehensibly higher than any number of specimens that can ever be harvested by collectors (for scientific reasons, or any other reason). For insect populations, collecting is never the problem. The real problem is HABITAT DESTRUCTION, and always has been. Because of their extremely high mortality rates, no insect species can afford to be "rare" or "uncommon", otherwise they simply couldn't survive in the numbers necessary to sustain their populations. They get around this issue through their ability to breed prolifically, ensuring that at least some will always survive to adulthood and reproduce. Some species might be considered "rare" by collectors in the sense that they have quite limited geographic ranges, but within those ranges, they are usually locally abundant. That said, there are likely a few (though very much exceptional) instances in which the collecting of certain, extremely localized insect species needs to be regulated, or perhaps even prohibited, but ultimately, it is the conservation of habitats as a whole that truly matters. You can't protect one species, without also protecting all of the other links in the living system of which it is a part.
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Post by yorky on May 26, 2021 10:36:34 GMT -8
OK can anyone give me a documented factual account of a particular insect becoming extinct from over collecting and I mean factual? Not emotive hand wringing and bleating. Can anybody give me a factual account of the numbers of a localised species becoming rarer due to over collecting? Please don't cite the UK populations of maculinea arion or lycaena dispar, they've been done to death and it still comes down to changes in land management or habitat loss. People who blame collecting for a decrease understand nothing whatsoever about insect population dynamics and just show their complete ignorance on a subject they profess to be an expert on.
I wait with baited breath.
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Post by gaspipe on May 26, 2021 11:09:29 GMT -8
I agree that this topic is a perfect tool for anti-collecting groups. It was interesting but I will delete it soon. Better safe than sorry Oh my god. Lighten up people . Geez I thought it was just a fun poll. Not all of us get our panties in a knot over such a “ crude measure “. It is fun , it is interesting to people like me who collect for the joy of it . Deleting this thread typifies what is wrong with today’s world
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Post by livingplanet3 on May 26, 2021 11:18:06 GMT -8
OK can anyone give me a documented factual account of a particular insect becoming extinct from over collecting and I mean factual? Not emotive hand wringing and bleating. Can anybody give me a factual account of the numbers of a localised species becoming rarer due to over collecting? Please don't cite the UK populations of maculinea arion or lycaena dispar, they've been done to death and it still comes down to changes in land management or habitat loss. People who blame collecting for a decrease understand nothing whatsoever about insect population dynamics and just show their complete ignorance on a subject they profess to be an expert on. I wait with baited breath. A insect species that's become extinct due to over-collecting? I'm not aware of a single one.
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Post by nomihoudai on May 26, 2021 12:08:07 GMT -8
This is a gif I made this morning using the numbers for a year. It compares 10 quintillion to the average of 100 collectors.
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Post by thejsonboss on May 26, 2021 16:53:06 GMT -8
As long as you don't collect so hard that you wipe out local populations which is nearly impossible there's no real issue. (or endangered sp ofc) I'm sorry if this is somehow my fault.
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leptraps
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Posts: 2,397
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Post by leptraps on May 26, 2021 18:47:07 GMT -8
Insects have the ability to reproduce by incredible numbers. However, destroy or eliminate the habitat for those species, you destroy the ability of those insect to reproduce.
In the mid-1970's the state of Florida attempted to wipe out the mosquitoes in the Florida Keys with arial spraying of insecticides. They managed to kill about everything except the mosquitoes.
While living in Lake Worth, Florida, mosquitoes were a serious problem. The County operated trucks that drove throughout the county, and especially in residential areas spraying insecticides. The arial spraying killed about everything but The mosquitoes.
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Post by thepinmaker on May 27, 2021 0:38:05 GMT -8
Based on some of the discussion about insect pins that have been going on lately, I started to think about how large that market would be. That led me to think about how many pins the average person might use in a year, so I thought I would set up a poll to see what kind of numbers some of the folks on the board are putting up. I assume we have everything from the most casual hobbyist to people that do this for a living, but I really don't have a feel for how many the average person collects.
At any rate, I look forward to hearing some of the crazy numbers people have.
Thanks for posting this discussion, I m really fascinated about the figures, that insectnet members that have answered, i don't know if all the specimens, are pinned , with insect pins or another tools, we will have time to discover, in the coming months, , my post is only to thank your to have opened this thread, that will add some positive clues about the specimens pinning.
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Post by tv on Jun 5, 2021 20:13:25 GMT -8
Based on some of the discussion about insect pins that have been going on lately, I started to think about how large that market would be. That led me to think about how many pins the average person might use in a year, so I thought I would set up a poll to see what kind of numbers some of the folks on the board are putting up. I assume we have everything from the most casual hobbyist to people that do this for a living, but I really don't have a feel for how many the average person collects.
At any rate, I look forward to hearing some of the crazy numbers people have.
Thanks for posting this discussion, I m really fascinated about the figures, that insectnet members that have answered, i don't know if all the specimens, are pinned , with insect pins or another tools, we will have time to discover, in the coming months, , my post is only to thank your to have opened this thread, that will add some positive clues about the specimens pinning. I'm just glad that folks are finding it interesting. I appreciate you reaching out to us to get feedback, and look forward to trying out the new pins.
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Post by vabrou on Nov 23, 2021 17:46:56 GMT -8
Now here is a topic that I can factually answer. Consider I currently have an insect trap inventory of between 450-500 automatic self-designed, automatic capture traps. For the past 40 years I have lived on 10 wooded acres in a rural forested area of horse farms, cow farms, etc. I first began running light traps and bait traps I self-designed in 1968 on property of about 34 acres surrounded by sugar cane plantations and cypress swamp along the Mississippi River in Louisiana. I do not collect anything using a sheet or a wall of a structure. I often tell people the last time I did collect using a sheet was 53 years ago (1968) and that is a true statement. Beginning in 1969 I turned on several high-wattage light traps and they have remained on to present day (52 years so far). I also ran fermenting fruit bait traps and added more light traps in the early 70s. Then in 1975 I began running semiochemical lure traps for clearwing moths. Back then semiochemicals were called 'pheromones'. Since 1975 to present day, I have continuously run clearwing moth traps using semiochemical lures. And concerning clearwing moths we have personally captured about 400,000 adult moths using all of our traps and methods. But we collect all insects and specialize and concentrate on moths. I kept accurate records of how many specimens I processed (pinned, labeled, and spread for lepidoptera) for about 15 years and that period averaged about 13,000 specimens per year, on the high end over 42,000 one year.
We have also captured about 200,000 hawkmoths over the past 52 years here at our home property including two species new to science. In our 30 consecutive year published study of the Sphingidae of Louisiana we reported capturing 83,889 wild adult Sphingidae specimens representing 46 species within the state of Louisiana. For some other sought after insect families e.g. Catocala, we captured as much as 30,000 adult underwings on three occasions during just the month of June over the past 40 years here at our home property, and we normally capture adult Catocala here from April into December. Note that much of this time we continuously operated 5-7 high-wattage light traps and 8 large fermenting fruit bait traps. I would empty the bait traps in the morning and by mid afternoon there would be dozens of newly captured underwings in these traps that entered during daylight hours. We planted about 160 apple and pear trees here in order to have a low cost solution to obtaining large volumes of fruit. We captured lots of Sphingidae and Cerambycidae and clearwing moths in the bait traps. I reminisce that we burned up about a half dozens kitchen blenders making bait before we moved on to several more heavy duty commercial duty blenders. Though, we ate a lot of apple and pear pies, not to mention walking around the property sampling the numerous varieties off of the trees.
To get back to the topic, We have operated our stationary traps on our 10 acres for the past 40 years, 24 hours every day of every year, and the most notable amount of insect captures for a single 24 hour period here at our home amounted to about 124 million insects. When we first purchased this property, I self-installed electrical breaker panels and all underground wiring in order to establish light trap locations throughout the property. Truly we have captured numerous billions of insects here in Louisiana over that past 52 years. You may say he is full of crap. Ask anyone who has ever visited me over the decades, they will tell you otherwise. We have had numerous collectors and researchers visit us here at our home. Now the often asked question is "How did you count them all?" Well by profession I am a Quality Assurance Engineer and we simply took a statistical representative sample using well industry established sampling procedures.
The next issue to mention, is that you should know in order to collect such huge volumes every day it was necessary to design and fabricate new methods and new equipment to handle the huge volumes of insects entering the traps and be dispatched immediately in order to obtain pristine quality specimens. At the beginning of our half century journey we designed and used collection chambers attached to all of our light traps and these methods and other equipment was redesigned so that our fruit bait traps and our clearwing moth traps all had automatic capture collection chambers. The answer to your next question is CYANIDE. Yes every specimens entering our collection chambers were immediately and automatically dispatched using sodium cyanide. No hand collecting was done. Having numerous hundreds of traps we have used a lot of cyanide. Having such quantities of specimens also caused us to improve and construct a large volume of pinning boards and purchasing hundreds of thousands of insect pins directly from various factories. We also designed and had fabricated a one of a kind laboratory drying oven to handle the accelerated drying for large numbers of pinned and spread specimens on balsa-wood pinning boards and for accelerated drying for papered materials. Use of the drying oven also 100% eliminated all of the museum pests (dermestids and psocids) as they were desiccated using low heat. We purchased lamps and bulbs and all the electrical wiring and components typically found in electrical light fixtures by the hundreds at a time. All electrical traps automatically operated using photoelectric on/off controls. It has been a great adventure making all of these thousands of new discoveries. We have officially donated in excess of 348,829 Louisiana insects to museums in the United States alone for which we have independent written appraisals. Additionally we have placed ~700,000 additional specimens of Louisiana insects in museums and private research collections in countries out of the USA and across the world. Additionally, our current personal scientific research collection of Louisiana insects located at our home in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana contains an additional (~450,000) specimens (primarily lepidoptera, and some coleoptera) in 650 Cornell drawers. Along the way we also accumulated Collection of world Sphingidae (approx 40,000 specimens) 800+ species from 120 countries of the world -- Sold 1987. And a Collection of world Eudocima (approx 10,000 + specimens) 42 species from 42 countries of the world and many island locations presently housed at Abita Springs, Louisiana.
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Post by vabrou on Nov 24, 2021 6:38:49 GMT -8
Some additional thoughts regarding Insect pins. Since the late 60s I have purchased around ½ million insect pins from one primary vendor. All pins I used were obtained from numerous sources retail and wholesale, but the vast majority were obtained from Emil Arlt’s Factory of pins, Wien, Austria. This manufacturer had the highest Quality pins of all, available for many decades. His brands were commonly available worldwide with brand names as trademark image of an Elephant, though the word Elephant did not appear anywhere on this product, and another trademark line of pins, named Imperial (Karlsbad), and a line of stainless steel as well. Truly his products were the highest quality and when you opened a pack of 100 pin, there were always 100 pins, sometimes 101,102. And around the early 70s in the USA, the price of 1,000 pins Imperial brand pins were $3.00 retail !! I suspect this was due to the currency exchange rate back then.
A decade or so back I purchased 16,000 stainless steel pins from a manufacturer in China. This proved to be a bad decision on my part. Pins were packaged in plastic vials of 100 pins, but several statistical samples found that vials contained between 82 and 108 pins per vial. Also the pin diameters were unlike anything produced by numerous other manufacturers I was familiar with worldwide. #3 size equivalent to #2, #2 size more in line with #1, #1 more equivalent to #0, size #0 more equivalent to size #00. But, the length of the pins were a positive surprise, as all of the pins were 2mm greater in length than most all others on the market. This was a very notable improvement in my opinion when the pins were used. In fact, I think if standard insect pins were 5mm lengthier, this would be a very sought after product. I do not recommend any pins manufactured in China or India without careful examination.
Around 2001-2002 The Austrian Factory of pins and remaining inventory was purchased by Hildegard Winkler who began selling off Emile Arlt’s leftover inventory, prices retail then according to my records for 2002: Imperial brand $40.00/ 1000, Elephant brand $47.24/ 1000, and stainless steel $50.87/ 1000.
For decades, I also considered trying to start an insect pin factory, here in the US as there are no US manufacturers for this product. But after analyzing the project financially including tax obligations and employee cost, insurance, etc, I declined doing that. Glad I did not, as a considerable number of new European competitors have arrived on the scene over the decades.
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Post by tv on Nov 29, 2021 20:33:58 GMT -8
I think you've probably claimed the prize for highest tally per year and overall. Very impressive!
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