Now available!

 The new 4th Edition of the Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Washington is now available to purchase on my sales site!

Also available are my new bookmarks showcasing a variety of butterflies from the Northwest:

NW Leps Workshop 2024

Just announced: the 45th annual NW Lepidopterists Workshop will be October 26-27th at the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis. It's free and any butterfly and moth enthusiasts are welcome!

For more information see here: https://osac.oregonstate.edu/events/45th-annual-pacific-northwest-lepidopterists-workshop

Data and Databases

I've recently taken over as the Zone 2 (British Columbia, Idaho, Oregon, Washington) Coordinator for the Lepidopterists' Society Season Summary. With that has come many questions from people as I compiled my first report and have been learning the ropes. This post summarizes the public databases that include or are exclusively for records of Lepidoptera.

Simply defined, a database is a collection of data that is organized to facilitate the search and retrieval of that data. Prior to the digital age, such a database could consist of a card catalogue, or even a well-organized series of notebooks. With the advance of digital technology, the number and usage of online databases has increased over the past twenty years. In particular, when analyzing large downloads of butterfly data, I've noticed a trend of the number of modern records beginning to sharply increase around 2013, which is roughly when iNaturalist and eButterfly began to catch on.

There are four sites to which users may submit Lepidoptera records online:

BAMONA began in 1995 as two sites, Butterflies of the U.S. and Moths of the U.S., which were merged and relaunched in 2006 as Butterflies and Moths of North America. Users can submit their photos for verification or identification. Records are shown as orange dots on a Google basemap, with historic records (usually center points of counties, indicating occurrence somewhere in the county) shown as purple dots. Currently it hosts over 953,000 verified records of butterflies and moths.

BugGuide was launched in 2003 and is hosted by Iowa State University. It is structured to assist in species identification via a clickable guide, browsing photos by taxa, or by submitting photos as an "ID request". People may also submit any of their observations to the website. It currently hosts over 200,000 records of butterflies and moths, and many more of other Arthropods. Photos from verified submissions of moths on BugGuide are (with permission) sometimes copied to the Moth Photographers Group site.

iNaturalist began as a Master's project at UC Berkeley in 2008, eventually becoming an initiative of the California Academy of Sciences in 2014, and turned into an independent non-profit organization in 2023. It currently hosts over 2.5 million "research grade" records of butterflies and moths.

eButterfly also began as a graduate student's idea around 2010, forming in 2011 and initially launching in 2012 as a Canadian program, eventually expanding across North America. It is beginning to grow worldwide and currently hosts over 530,000 observations of butterflies.

Two databases compile data from most other online databases, in addition to many other sources, such as collections or smaller project-based sources. The Symbiota Collections of Arthropods Network (SCAN), as the name implies, is limited to Arthropod records only. It currently hosts over 33.7 million records for 238,000 species. The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) contains most, if not all, of the same records fed into SCAN, but also contains data for all species, not just Arthropods. It currently hosts over 2.6 billion records. Many museum and university collections, and even some private ones, load their specimen data into these databases. The contributing collections are largely determined by which ones can obtain funding to support the digitization of their collections (it takes a lot of man-hours!).

BugGuide, iNaturalist, and eButterfly all load their "verified" or "research grade" records to SCAN and GBIF. BAMONA is not set up to do this, so any records submitted there will only be visible through that site, although researchers may submit data requests to the site.

Another way to submit public records is through The Lepidopterists' Society Season Summary ("SS"). This is an annual summary of butterfly and moth records in North America that has been in existence ever since the Society started in 1947. Any county or state records and other notable observations are printed in the annual summary that is sent to members, while all submitted data, printed or not, is curated and loaded into SCAN (some has also been loaded to BAMONA). It is up to you whether you want to submit a full report of all your observations for the year, or only a selection. The Zone Coordinator will select which records will be printed. Observations submitted to other databases (iNaturalist, BAMONA, etc.) can also be submitted to the SS, but to avoid an abundance of duplicate records in SCAN, the Coordinator will only submit a selection of these records. For example, if an observation on iNaturalist is determined to be a new state or county record, or is a species that hasn't been seen in a particular location for a long time, it can go into the SS to make it visible to a wider audience and document the special record. 

Some other items to note about submissions:

• You do not have to be a member of LepSoc to submit records to the SS.
• Any records submitted are not private: they will be loaded to SCAN, from which anyone can search, view, and download data.
• There is a delay in uploading to SCAN: currently records up to about 2020 are loaded.
• The Zone Coordinator can give you their preferred methods for submitting data to them. It is highly recommended to use an Excel spreadsheet, and a preformatted file can be downloaded from the LepSoc SS page (linked above). I have a slightly different spreadsheet format I like to use for sorting and curating data, and can email that to you upon request.
• You do not have to submit any photos with your records, but the Coordinator may request to see a photo of a particular record to verify the correct identification.

If you wish to share your data publicly but aren't sure which site is right for you, ask yourself some questions:

• Do you only photograph butterflies and often make multiple observations along a path or general area? eButterfly might be the site for you.
• Do you wish to report moths (with or without butterflies)? iNaturalist or BAMONA are probably for you.
• Do you enjoy the ability to interact with multiple experts and peers commenting on your observations, but don't mind if some of your posts don't get consistently verified? Try iNaturalist (eButterfly has started doing something similar as well).
• Do you like to report species in addition to Lepidoptera? Try iNaturalist or BugGuide.
• If you don't want to take the time to post individual observations with photos, and prefer to type up all your records in Excel, try the SS.
• Do you want to submit to the SS but also like to post on one of the other sites? That's okay! Just recognize that the Coordinator will only use any that are particularly notable, but you don't have to make that decision. Simply put a link to each of your records into a Comments column when you type up your records to send to the Coordinator, that way they can easily verify your records and select which ones should go into the SS.

If you have any questions about the SS, please feel free to contact me; my email is in the left panel of this website.

Updates

I just updated two of the static pages in the menu on the left:

Collecting & Rearing Supplies - added a few new sources and updated comments.

Collecting & Mounting Specimens - finally got around to adding a bunch of photos that my mom took for me way back in 2018 (yeah, I'm waaay behind...) demonstrating how I rehydrate and spread specimens. These are in addition to the original photos that aren't great quality (taken with an iPod, remember those?) but are still useful in showing how I deal with different sizes of paper strips. I also added a detailed section on how to rehydrate specimens.

Keep up the comments and emailing me suggestions, I do get around to things eventually!

Echo Azure vs. Brown Elfin

Last summer while hunting for Asher's Blues (Celastrina asheri) in eastern Oregon, I collected six larvae from red osier dogwood (Cornus sericea) flowers at Bear Hollow Campground southeast of Fossil in Wheeler County, Oregon. I was hopeful that they might be asheri: the larvae were mostly green compared to the (usually) heavier-marked Celastrina echo (see my article for more examples). Shortly after bringing them home, one of the larvae started to stand out to me as "odd", it had two pink-brown spots in an odd location and was noticeably shiny compared to the velvety-matte appearance of the others. Searching through James & Nunnallee's Life Histories of Cascadia Butterflies, I found a similar-looking larva: Callophrys augustinus, the Brown Elfin! However, osier dogwood was not listed as a known larval food plant, which I soon verified from Dave Nunnallee and Jonathan Pelham that it had never been recorded for augustinus. As the larva grew, it developed an even more striking pattern, had large, raised bumps on each segment, and maintained a very shiny appearance. The pupa was also different: a wider abdomen, solid dark brown color, and not shiny, compared to the "skinny" and shiny, honey-brown colored pupae of Celastrina. The puzzling bit was that one other larva produced an identical pupa, yet that larva had been one of the least-marked larvae of the six. This led me to second-guess myself and wonder if perhaps these two were just a variation of echo or asheri, or if in fact both were augustinus exhibiting a different larval morph, possibly due it using osier dogwood.

All larvae were found on osier dogwood flowers, which were at a stage where they were just beginning to lose petals on some flower heads. I continued to feed the larvae on osier dogwood flowers and young seed pods until they pupated. Because there were only six larvae, I kept track of them all the way through by numbering 1 through 6. 

Celastrina echo (1, 3, 5, 6) and Callophrys augustinus (2, 4) pupae in October 2022.

Most of my rearing experience is with Saturniidae, cocoons and pupae of which usually do well with only occasional misting through the winter. However, my experience rearing Celastrina asheri last year resulted in only about 50% adult emergence and almost half of those never fully expanding their wings. I had overwinter those between paper towels which I misted with water a few times through the winter. The temperature and humidity sensor I keep with all my overwintering pupae was usually between 30-50% humidity, only rising to around 60% for a couple days when they were misted. I started thinking about what happens in the wild, that Celastrina pupae overwinter in the leaf litter, usually buried under snow, and must become completely drenched during the spring snowmelt. In comparison, cocoons and some butterfly pupae (like swallowtails) tend to be attached to twigs or in cracks of bark and are more exposed to the elements but are never completely submerged. So for this round of overwintering, I wanted to construct something that would more closely mimic consistently damp leaf litter while also being free of parasites (i.e. not using regular potting soil or wild leaf litter). Remembering that some lepidopterists have used bricks or clay pots for overwintering, which help regulate temperature and humidity, I came up with a plan. I used a clean clay pot tray, filled it half way with orchid mix (small bark chips and perlite used for potting orchids), then fashioned a cardboard separator which I taped to the edge of the clay pot using gorilla tape. I then covered the bark with wet sphagnum moss which I had previously soaked in another container (it comes in dry, sterile packages for gardening and craft use). I placed the tray into a slightly bigger plastic plant tray and packed more wet sphagnum moss into the space around the edge. This was to help the clay pot stay damp longer rather than evaporating out through the bottom. Initially I also placed part of a paper towel in each section so I wouldn't lose the pupae down into the sphagnum moss (see photo above), but within a month it started to mold so I removed it and just carefully placed each pupa in a spot where it wouldn't fall into a larger space. I loosely covered the tray with a folded hand towel to help with temperature and humidity regulation, then put everything into a small mesh bug cage on my north-facing balcony in late October.

Overwintering tray during construction

The temp/humidity sensor was kept next to the tray under the towel. The relative humidity fluctuated with the temperature but was fairly steady between 50-70% all winter. Whenever it started staying around 50% or less, I added 1/4 to 1/2 cup of water around the edge of the tray. This happened maybe 3-4 times through the winter. Once I accidentally spilled a bunch of water into the tray to the point where all the pupae were floating. I thought for sure this whole thing was a stupid idea and I had just drowned them and wouldn't get anything to emerge. I poured off a little of the excess water but left the rest to soak into the moss. Another time during the winter, the temperatures dipped down to 17F, which is very cold for my SW WA area. With difficulty I resisted bringing the cage inside overnight, all the while thinking that for sure they would freeze those two or three days, but reminding myself that they came from a very cold part of Oregon and had to be able to survive temperatures even lower, even if they were insulated under several feet of snow all winter.

In early March I rolled the towel over to the side just in case anything decided to pop out on a warm day. With the spring flowers finally blooming and a couple days of 60F weather (and reports of a wild Celastrina echo being spotted in NW Washington), I got impatient and brought the cage inside ahead of the next several days of cool and rainy weather. Three days later three of the six emerged, quickly followed by the rest over this past week. All my fears were relieved and the identity of species revealed! Four Celastrina echo and two Callophrys augustinus, confirming a new larval food plant record for augustinus! Click on the images to view at full screen.

Larva 1: Celastrina echo, female

Larva 3: Celastrina echo, male

Larva 5: Celastrina echo, female

Larva 6: Celastrina echo, female

Larva 2: Callophrys augustinus, male

Larva 4: Callophrys augustinus, female

Reviewing the limited images of augustinus larvae, there are a few examples of solid green larvae, all from California and Arizona:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/2723370

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/89286157

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/2717237

http://butterfliesofamerica.com/L/imagehtmls/LycRio/Callophrys_augustinus_annettae_larva_Pima_Co_AZ_USA_6-IV-02_JPB_i.htm

http://butterfliesofamerica.com/L/imagehtmls/LycRio/Callophrys_augustinus_iroides_5th_instar_larvae_from_one_female_Otay_Mountain_San_Diego_Co_CA_USA_06-VI-2008_KOJI_i.htm

One of the keys to telling apart Celastrina larvae from Callophrys augustinus is their head color: the former is always dark brown, almost black, and the latter is always pale brown. This should have been a clue early on but I didn't notice it on Larva #2 until I reviewed my photos much later. Another marker I noticed, that so far seems fairly consistent in images I've studied, is that the augustinus larvae have a dark patch in the center of the fold just above their head. Celastrina may have a dark marking on either side of that same segment but it always seems to be lighter in the center, essentially a reverse from augustinus. These and other identification markers are described in the following images.

Celastrina have a dark brown head (left) and no dark patch in the center of the segment above the head, while augustinus are the reverse: a pale brown head and a dark patch on the first segment.

Segments on Celastrina larvae tend to be flattened with an indentation in the middle (a, b), although mature larvae may have more rounded segments (c). They also always have a very velvety appearance (b, c). Callophrys augustinus larvae tend to have prominently-raised bumps on each segment, giving them a more ridged appearance. They also often have a shiny appearance (e, f) but this may not be as noticeable in some color forms (d).

The relatively smooth segments of Celastrina larvae compared to the ridged appearance of augustinus is best seen in the pre-pupal stage, such as those shown here.

Celastrina pupae are shiny and start out as a rose- or honey-brown color with varying amounts of black speckles and patches, compared to augustinus pupae which are solid dark brown, not shiny, and tend to be more robust or "fatter" than Celastrina pupae (this is most notable in the photo of all six pupae at the beginning of this post). Note that the augustinus pupa shown here is post-emergence with the crack visible from where the adult emerged. However, the pupa did not noticeably change color from before the emergence, compared to Celastrina pupae which noticeably darken (bottom left) prior to emergence and then are somewhat transparent after the adult emerges.

In summary, while a sample size of six is rather small to confidently say this overwintering method was a raging success, I will definitely be employing it in the future and look forward to better success rearing Celastrina asheri the next time around!