[HN Gopher] A Texas "moth man" photographed 550 species in his o...
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A Texas "moth man" photographed 550 species in his own yard
Author : anarbadalov
Score : 139 points
Date : 2024-08-16 15:04 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.texasmonthly.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.texasmonthly.com)
| tocs3 wrote:
| I like this sort of thing. Someone exploring his own little
| environment. It seems like the sort of thing we should be hearing
| more about. Maybe some high schools should start promoting some
| of this.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| They really should. I know most of the nature documenting I do
| is totally old hat to anyone actually doing field studies, but
| the experience is so enriching.
|
| The other day I spent 4 hours recording baby coho salmon in
| disconnected pools along a creek bed. Coho have been researched
| enough so I'm not doing anything particularly important, but in
| the process I learned some really cool stuff:
|
| - The creek bed is absolutely filled with sculpins. A pool
| perhaps 3 inches deep and 3 feet in diameter could contain over
| a dozen of them
|
| - Tiny puddles containing perhaps 500ml of water contained half
| a dozen fish or so; typically sculpins and sticklebacks but
| occasionally coho fry as well
|
| - As the water levels were lowering, dozens of huge ravens were
| staked out and waiting for stranded fish. I returned days later
| and sure enough, every dried body of water had been picked
| clean
|
| - The sheer number of nymphs, larvae, and adult arthropods was
| staggering once I looked closely
|
| - Under every rock on the dried creek bed I could find
| everything from developing insects to animals like frogs hiding
| out
|
| The amount of life far exceeded what I expected. And the
| diversity of life from micro to macro was also amazing. To
| think the creek bed extends several kilometres and it's
| essentially all like this for most of it (though much drier
| higher up). I can't wait to explore it more. I'm mostly curious
| how the coho will manage before rains return, and at this point
| it looks pretty grim. Some pools with at least 100 individuals
| will almost certainly be okay, but many more smaller pools
| containing dozens of fish are rapidly draining. The ravens are
| having an easy summer, I think.
|
| edit: I have some videos and photos here https://steve-
| adams.me/coho/ (I don't normally share what I record but
| recently decided I might as well, because I wish more people
| did).
| whalesalad wrote:
| I saw a plume moth the other day and thought it was an IUD lol
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I'm more impressed by the fact that 550 species visited his yard.
| Must have a really boss yard.
| hooverd wrote:
| Only 10k more to go. There really are an obscene number of moth
| (and beetle) species.
| digging wrote:
| Probably does, but if you pay close attention to the moths
| around your house over a year, I expect you'll exceed your
| estimates by an order of magnitude at least. They're incredibly
| diverse. (And many are super small, that you probably don't
| normally pay attention to or realize are moths.)
| pvaldes wrote:
| Is not really difficult to find this amount of biodiversity on
| most wild temperate gardens. With some effort you can easily
| have a collection of two thousand species of plants on a middle
| size garden if you want, plus animals attracted by those
| plants.
|
| On tropical ones the number should be much, much higher.
| joss82 wrote:
| Texas yard is the size of a small country
| gottorf wrote:
| Fun fact: El Paso, TX is closer to the Pacific (via the Gulf of
| California) than it is to its own state capital, Austin.
| xipho wrote:
| One of my previous advisors, while working on a PhD in sociality
| in insects, had a lot of time to spend in a front lawn in New
| York City. Trained to observe he recorded hundreds of species, on
| that lawn. Another insect curator I worked with (also from
| Texas), collected in a nearby park throughout his lifetime (still
| is I'm sure). Collected well over 1000 species of beetles, alone.
| Both were highly, highly trained, in a way that is increasingly
| disappearing. There are many, many other stories like this. That
| training included as much how and where to look as it did
| technical assessment (e.g. what you needed to see to identify
| species). Because of a whole pile of factors, stubborn old-
| timers, new technologies, lack of foresight and vision, we're
| losing that expertise rapidly. By the time we need answers from
| the vast genetic experiments that come from the lab that is
| Earth's evolution, we'll not know where, or how to look for them.
| NavinF wrote:
| I think it's more so that people aren't interested. If you
| trained a neural network to classify species using photos taken
| through a binocular microscope, I'm sure you could match human
| performance. If you used hyperspectral photos you could achieve
| superhuman performance.
| pvaldes wrote:
| > I'm sure you could match human performance
|
| Not. You still would need an human to sample this moths, kill
| them appropriately, and manipulate it carefully to move it in
| the correct position under your binocular in the correct
| light and place. They are fragile and you can't do it without
| an human.
|
| Would be worse than what you have currently. No capability to
| sample selectively, or to jump in advance to all the
| interesting parts (instead to do all the walk for every
| single species).
|
| In the end you will have a worst performance, much more work
| to do, and none of the trained experts available to put any
| control in your system. Mimetic moths can deceive even a well
| trained expert.
| spunker540 wrote:
| What if we swap the computer vision solution for a genetic
| sequencing solution? Can DNA tests can do moth
| identification at human-level performance?
| xipho wrote:
| AI, DNA, morphology. Biodiversity is vast, and diverse.
| Figuring out the clusters within it (there a huge range
| of concepts of what a species [== clusters] is), and
| figuring out how that cluster can be meaningfully applied
| to issues that affect humans takes time, a lot of time.
| We commonly say in our research group that all of these
| are just another tool, we should embrace them all, but we
| can't escape the time it takes to work with the data at
| all levels. All the sequencing, AI, and even plain-old
| pictures in the world doesn't matter if you don't know
| how to catch the beast. And there are millions and
| millions of things to look at, all over the world. Again,
| in working with data at this scope on a day-today basis,
| not even big data, just broad, I'm struck with how little
| we can relate to this vastness, and I've been trained for
| decades to work with it.
|
| We have videos from last years conference that highlight
| the tech that tries to rapidly barcode species, that can
| give you a flavour of the complexity involved. This is
| perhaps the world's leading taxonomists exploring how,
| practically, to do such:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX_1wdmROhU.
| adolph wrote:
| Maybe something like a solar powered game camera only for
| ant-sized game. Folks seem to go for the Haikubox[0] for bird
| sound recognition using BirdNet[1].
|
| I'd love to see the little spiders or maybe silkworms that
| lay tiny lines in the grass of my neighborhood that shimmer
| in the low morning light and dew.
|
| 0. https://haikubox.com/
|
| 1. https://birdnet.cornell.edu/
| Ovah wrote:
| I'm very active on iNaturalist. The name suggestions made
| there by image recognition, at least for the genus I work
| with, is a complete and utter joke. >98% of name suggestions
| for that group are incorrect. As soon as a genus becomes
| diverse, it classifies everything as a single species instead
| of a genus. It does not have ability to recognize 'the
| unknown'. Most of my time on that website is wasted on
| clearing up gross incorrect name suggestions from AI that
| people accept without any checks of plausibility. Even with
| species that have >2000 confirmed observations, it still
| incorrectly suggests the name for obviously completely
| unrelated species. You didn't take the time to explain what
| you mean with 'hyperspectral' but I'm assuming it just
| introduces a new dataset where we start all over.
| s0rce wrote:
| I get quite a few genus level suggestions when it can't
| determine to the species level. I'm not an expert
| taxonomist so I'm sure there are still many overly specific
| incorrect assignments.
| josefresco wrote:
| In 7th grade we had a project to collect, euthanize with
| alcohol and pin insects for classification and study. Every kid
| in that class, had to collect 50-100 insects with zero training
| and most were quite successful. I'm not sure this means
| anything, but I was amazed at the diversity of the species
| collected by my classmates.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| What do you mean? There are more stem PhDs than ever before.
| Field work is still happening. More than ever perhaps with the
| ever present desire for genomic surveys of natural populations.
| Not just in academic work but in industry supported work as
| well.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| For those that don't know, there's a double entendre on the story
| title.
|
| The "moth man" is a well known urban legend in northeastern USA.
| A movie was even filmed on the premise [1] . A "texas mothman"
| playfully may suggest to some that the terror is "migrating"
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mothman_Prophecies_(film...
| bloopernova wrote:
| And mothman was allegedly seen in Chicago too! Kyle Kinane does
| a fantastic Chicago Mothman accent:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/lu/podcast/chicago-mothman/id1139...
| analog31 wrote:
| The Mythical Man-Moth
|
| -- Apologies to Fred Brooks
| oddthink wrote:
| Elizabeth Bishop was there first:
| https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47537/the-man-moth
| Loughla wrote:
| Monster self-help manuals are something I didn't know I
| wanted until right now. And it turns out a lot of them still
| work without changing the titles.
|
| -Opening Your Presence: Presenting the YOU You Want Others to
| See
|
| For ghosts.
|
| -Good Power: Leading Positive Change in Our Lives, Work, and
| World
|
| Frankenstein's monster
|
| -True North
|
| The yeti
|
| -Once an Eagle
|
| Rok
|
| -multipliers
|
| Werewolves or Dracula maybe?
| ssl-3 wrote:
| As a native of Ohio who has visited The Moth Man Museum[0], I
| take certain exception to this region being called
| "northeastern USA."
|
| It's close, but it's not quite there [1].
|
| 0: https://www.mothmanmuseum.com/
|
| 1: https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/united-
| sta...
| gyanreyer wrote:
| I just saw an Ailanthus Webworm moth this morning in Michigan and
| was struck by how different it looked from most insects I see
| here. They're native to the south but have apparently been
| starting to adapt to colder conditions and move further north
| thanks to the massive explosion of the horribly invasive Tree of
| Heaven, which is somehow still legal for nurseries to sell even
| though it is extremely aggressive and is a host for Spotted
| Lanternflies.
|
| Anyways, since I've gotten into native plant gardening I have
| gained a huge appreciation for insects. You can find some really
| amazing things in your own yard if you pay attention.
| laristine wrote:
| https://archive.is/zjEuP
| GaggiX wrote:
| This man is probably one of the very few who have read hundreds
| or possibly thousands of obscure Wikipedia pages about various
| species and families of moths. Some of the most obscure Wikipedia
| pages are about species of moth.
| zeagle wrote:
| > Moths aren't just pretty to look at; they're also important
| pollinators and a major source of food for birds and bats. But
| moths, like insects overall, are declining in both raw numbers
| and species diversity. Eckerman says recent studies have shown at
| least a 30 percent decline in insect abundance around the world
| over the past few decades. The likely culprits are pesticides and
| the loss of habitat to urban development. A threat to insects
| such as moths is a threat to the plants they pollinate and all
| the creatures above them in the food chain.
|
| It's amazing the drop in biodiversity of insects that comes from
| habitat destruction, monoculture, pesticide (ab)use. As a kid
| we'd drive across the prairies and have to wipe literal goop off
| the windshield and side view mirrors at each gas station...
|
| We planted native prairie plants throughout our yard roughly
| sequenced that something is always flowering. This morning I saw
| at least a dozen wild bees on one bunch of goldenrod* and nothing
| on the annuals next to it.
|
| * https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services...
| (not invasive for my region)
| 2cynykyl wrote:
| I remember the first time someone pointed out this lack of bug
| splatter to me and I was a bit scared about humanity's fate,
| but then someone else pointed out that our cars are a LOT more
| aerodynamic now. Not sure which side to land on here.
| frereubu wrote:
| This UK study used number plates, which haven't changed form
| between the two years (2004 and 2021), and have found a
| decline of just under 60%. Aerodynamics may have something to
| do with it, but I know from driving through insect-abundant
| areas recently that you still get plenty of splatter in
| modern cars.
|
| Overview: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2022/may/uks-
| flying-inse...
|
| Study PDF: https://cdn.buglife.org.uk/2022/05/Bugs-
| Matter-2021-National...
| doikor wrote:
| The number plate is still attached to the car and thus the
| shape of the rest of the car affects how air moves over it.
|
| How much is hard to say. Aerodynamics is just hard but
| basically as the car moves through air it pushes air out of
| the way and this air also pushes other air out of the way
| and thus elements next to each other will effect each
| other.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| It's the very front point of the car, that should be
| perfectly fine unless the plate or bumper is at some kind
| of an angle.
| zeagle wrote:
| I have to say seems like wishful thinking. Sure cars have
| changed and aren't insect traps but at 80km/h bugs splatter
| on a windshield. The decline of insect biomass has been well
| reported, e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29045418
| although not uniform. I've spent some time in northern areas
| where the bugs are bad!
| pnw wrote:
| >Moths aren't just pretty to look at
|
| Interestingly I know two people who are absolutely terrified of
| moths and cannot stand to even be in the same room.
| munificent wrote:
| I'm one as well.
|
| I realize it's an entirely irrational phobia. Moths,
| caterpillars, and grubs absolutely horrify me. It's something
| to do with them having a combination of exoskeleton-like
| insect-y parts and soft, fuzzy, or squishy non-insect-y
| parts.
|
| Actual bugs are OK (though I don't particularly like them).
| Snails are fine. Slugs are... less fine but tolerable. Moths,
| caterpillars and grubs make my skin crawl. Sea slugs are the
| absolute worst.
|
| Phobias are so weird.
| duckmysick wrote:
| On the other hand, the box tree moth seems to be doing fine -
| to the dismay of many gardeners. And boy oh boy can they ravage
| boxwood hedges. Unfortunately, insecticides are the only
| effective option in Europe and America. In Asia (where it's
| native) there are some natural predators, so the damage is
| limited. Birds aren't interested in the caterpillars. Some
| types of hornets are, but introducing them into non-native
| habitat brings other problems.
|
| Hotter than normally springs and falls don't help either; the
| moth thrives in the warmer weather and can go through as many
| as four cycles (generations) during a single year.
|
| https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/terrestrial/invertebrate...
|
| https://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant-pests-diseases/box-tree-mot...
| undebuggable wrote:
| Moths are aliens in their looks and vast diversity. My backyard
| favorite is hummingbird hawk-moth.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I saw those for the first time in 2022 and I was amazed that it
| existed. What a strange creature. I thought it was actually a
| hummingbird at first, and then its details emerged to me and I
| realized what I was seeing. So strange. And huge, for a bug!
|
| It was cruising around at dusk feeding on nectar.
| throwup238 wrote:
| I'm partial to the Death's-head Hawkmoth and the Ceanothus
| Silkmoth.
| somishere wrote:
| I've heard of these, they sound amazing!
|
| We get the odd Hercules moth in our backyard. Doesn't look
| anything like a bird close up, but it's so massive that when
| they get stuck in the house your first thought is that it's a
| bird or bat.
|
| Another cool thing we get is jumping spiders that imitate ants
| so they can hunt them - both green ants (an endemic weaver ant
| we get here) and another large metallic silver ant species I
| don't know a lot about. The spiders share the colouring of each
| species and walk backwards amongst them - their walking style
| changes and the abdomen looks like the head of the ant. They're
| rare, I've only observed them a couple of times over the years
| here, but it's wild to watch them do their thing.
| justincormack wrote:
| they are great, but only seen them in my front yard, and
| abroad.
| Morizero wrote:
| Here's his inaturalist profile:
| https://www.inaturalist.org/users/256619
|
| 19,715 observations of 3,892 species. Incredible contributor!
| zendaven wrote:
| Thanks! Wanted to see more pictures like these in the article.
| Natsu wrote:
| It's sad to me that the 'common' buckeye seems to be anything
| but common these days, it's always been one of my favorites to
| look at.
| s0rce wrote:
| Some of these are amazing
| https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/233201888
| thomasreggi wrote:
| keep a little moth under my pillow for the "moth man"
| fnord77 wrote:
| his "yard" seems to be pretty huge
| macintux wrote:
| Almost completely irrelevant, but I was astonished one day as I
| walked through the outskirts of Dallas: there was a yard nearly
| at eye level with a retaining wall, and the grass was overflowing
| with snails.
|
| I don't know how many times in my life I've actually seen a snail
| outside of water, it's very rare for me, but this was effectively
| an infestation. Surreal.
| originalvichy wrote:
| Funnily enough I have never seen a snail in water.
| sangnoir wrote:
| In many places in Texas, the soil can ruin foundations of
| single-storey buildings if allowed to cycle between wet and
| dry. To overcome this, watering the foundation is a requirement
| to maintain a baseline soil humidity level. Snails thrive in
| damp conditions.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Some snails join to aestivate.
|
| They climb grasses to take advantage of the cooling effect of
| the breeze, search protection on numbers and jail itselves on a
| protective membrane to sleep during the hotter days.
| munificent wrote:
| _> I don't know how many times in my life I've actually seen a
| snail outside of water_
|
| Probably depends a lot on where you live. I've lived in several
| US states and climates and snails were fairly common in most of
| them, of a variety of species.
|
| I was visiting Irvine California once. I was working back from
| work around sunset and on the sidewalk under a streetlight were
| _hundreds_ of snails. I 've never seen them congregate like
| that before.
| alberth wrote:
| OT: it's amazing how fewer bugs, inspects, etc exist today than
| when I was a kid.
|
| I still have vivid memories of car trips and the windowshield &
| the front of car - being completely covered with dead bugs.
|
| I have to imagine all those bugs were food for moths.
| DonaldFisk wrote:
| I can remember this too. But moth larvae feed on plants and the
| adults drink nectar from flowers. They don't eat other insects.
| rbanffy wrote:
| It's only a Moth Man if he comes from the Point Pleasant region.
| Otherwise it's just a weird entomologist.
| aurizon wrote:
| As a kid, in Toronto, I joined the Junior Field Naturalists in
| 1951 and attended many lectures and exploration field trips. I
| found it very informative, however I became a Chemist later on.
| https://www.rom.on.ca/en/romrecollects/stories/keyword/junio...
| nemo wrote:
| [delayed]
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