I looked at my spread supposed P. canadensis today and decided to upload photos here to contribute and also ask whether these are canadensis or something else:

New York specimens upperside


New York specimens underside


other canadensis


If Chuck needs better quality photos of any of these please let me know. I assume that the specimens in the 3rd photo are all canadensis, but was surprised that one is from South Dakota. As for the New York specimens, the one on the right is somewhat larger than the others, but perhaps these are all not true canadensis at all.

Adam.

Exercise caution in anything you pack whenever you are traveling.

A fellow collector and friend went to Ecuador in 2004 for a week. He was there to do a particular job but, at night he set up a light where he was staying and would do his collecting. He only had 2 killing jars with him and was using ethyl acetate as a knockdown agent.

After he initially stunned something using the killing bottle he would then transfer the specimen to a large round "christmas cookie" tin which he had poured plaster of Paris in. He would use this as his "dump" container for his killing bottles so he could keep the process of capturing things moving along.

When his week there was done he packed up his gear and headed back to the US via Miami airport. Upon his arrival he went through customs. He had placed this cookie tin in his carry-on luggage. It was x-rayed. The cookie tin came up as an object in question.

One of the officers took the cookie tin out of the carry-on bag and asked what was in it. My friend replied nothing. While this was true the officer started pulling on the lid to open it and my friend said "I WOULDN'T OPEN THAT IF I WERE YOU" !

Well, the officer looked at him popped open the lid and got a face full of ethyl acetate odor. The officer immediately drew his gun and pushed the panic button which sent everyone else (near my friend) scattering with my friend standing there at the x-ray belt.

He said in like 1 minute he was surrounded by 6 officers all pointing guns at him and screaming at him to get down on his knees. He was handcuffed and taken away and wound up having to do a whole lot of explaining.

Charges were filed against him and he wound up paying a sizable fine of some sort which to this day he is never revealed to me. It was a very painful lesson learned by him for an oversight.

I suppose logic would have made most of us leave that container and the killing bottles back in Ecuador. But, again not everyone shares the same thoughts.

Better to be safe and leave equipment behind (if you can) so that you never have to go through the experience my friend did.

bobw wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2024 9:08 am I'm sure you can find plenty of things in local pharmacies that can be used as mould inhibitors. Anything containing phenol will work; I use TCP, a common medical disinfectant.

Thanks, i see that Thymol in crystals is available in most African countries, so will go that path.

Naphtalene in small quantity should be no issue at all. If they ask, say "moth balls" to kill insects in my bags. They will be more than happy to let you enter with that.

I have always travelled the world with my cyanide jar and never had any question/issue. Once in Japan, they checked it, and I said it was to kill mosquitoes. They were very happy with that answer.

Have a nice trip !

I'm sure you can find plenty of things in local pharmacies that can be used as mould inhibitors. Anything containing phenol will work; I use TCP, a common medical disinfectant.

I'm going to throw this out for comments,
I'm travelling to Sth Africa, Zambia and Kenya early next year, taking a store box and wanting to take a small supply of napthalene and chlorocresol as mould preventer as its a trip through high humidity.
Am i likely to encounter issues over possession of a small bottle of white crystals,??
Customs can get a bit aggro.

It's been a long time since I've collected Hemileucas. I am sure they fly in some of our collecting areas, it's probably just timing. The last larva I
collected on wild rose was parasitized.

Make sure you get the looser weave bag. The tighter weave is too hard to see through and slows the net. You may have to ask for this via messaging or email.

adamcotton wrote: ↑Wed May 29, 2024 5:45 pm I must say Chuck is doing a great job trying to unravel what seems to be a very complex situation.
Adam.

I should note that though these are my field notes, I am not working alone, and am indebted to others.

Eurytides, who got me started on this darned project to begin with, continues his research in Canada and is my constant email companion. I lean heavily on him for learning and as a sounding board.

Jshuey has, behind the scenes, given me invaluable "off the record" advice.

Jhyatt, and others, have provided regional voucher specimens for comparative studies.

Images and observations from 58chevy, mothman, and Paul have helped define ranges, flight period, and behavior.

Bob gave me access again to the Carnegie collection (itself a must-see snapshot of entomology 100 years ago). The team at Cornell as well.

Adam, you as well on taxonomy and genetics.

There's a lot of back-and-forth question/answer sessions via email and PM. This helps educate me on systematics, taxonomy, Lepidoptera politics, and genetics.

So even though what most people read is my daily field report, there are actually a lot of hands in this research pie.

30may24:
63F/ 17C
50% cloud, winds NW 15

Observed 8, captured 0

OK, this is rediculous. I've started building my decoy, which I had 9 months to make, but didn't.

PM sent to nitinra.

Do you ever collect any of the Hemileucas in Oregon Kevin? There are some really cool color forms of H. eglanterina, H. nuttalli, and H. hera in south/central OR.

Hi Vernon,
thank you, 2007 publication, correct. Books are great, and I have a "library" such as it is, but they're not perfect.
I think here at my house we have limitations from light pollution, building and habitat destruction.
I have the single female pupa, and I figured the best way to have any chance at attracting an outdoor local
male was to put her in a cage, outdoors, buried in light soil, and keep an eye on things so I can make a decision when she hatches.
It is a short window, right now we are struggling with weather, a long drive to my collecting areas, and a health issue that makes field
work more difficult than it used to be to simply go out overnight, besides we are all getting older, aside from any maladies.
Your video is impressive, as are your efforts in general, always interesting reading.

Kevin,
You mention, I assume the 2007 publication. That subject is not the purpose of that publication, and such a treatment deserves a targeted discussion of using freshly emerged female moths to attract male moths. My personal experience spans the 1960's to 2024. I have used females to attract lots of saturnids, size-wise Anisotas to Attacus. The first problem in attempting to do this is your understanding of methods and your approach to this subject in order to be successful. It would be helpful to identify the naturally occurring wild brood(s) of the particular species where you plan on performing these activities. A particular species is not out and about anytime during the year. In fact, your chances are more limited to around 10 days for each annual brood of a particular species. Determining this for me here in my state of Louisiana was easy because I ran automatic capture light traps at this point for 55 years, 24 hours daily for 365-366 days every year, and documenting numbers of captures each day of the year. Doubtfully you are ready to tackle this massive endeavor. But you could do this on a smaller scale of one or two years. Here my wife and I ended up with around 500 automatic capture insect traps of all types (traps that do not require human presence).

Sure, you could just take your chances without any such information. We didn't have any such information in the mid 60s when I began collecting for any N.A. species. But in 1969 we began with one automatic-capture light trap and each year added another, our target back then to discover all the species of sphingidae occurring in my state. That sphingidae study ended 30 years later when we stopped counting hawkmoths. But, we documented 30 years of actual sphingid phenology data for the first time in N.A. But we also were able to document the same data for thousands of other species found in our hundreds of trap all along.

Being in NW US, you may not be familiar with the saturnid species Callosamia, but attached is a freely accessible link I published after nearly 50 years of collecting Callosamia in Louisiana. Prior to 50 years ago only 2 species of Callosamia were recognized in N.A.. Since then C. securifera was resurrected and elevated to species status. My publication linked here illustrates dates of capture for all three species in Louisiana. If you look at fig. 4 and fig. 5; what do you think the chances you would find adult C. angulifera and A. securifera if you looked for them during the third week of May? Actually the bulk of each brood population occurs (+/- 5 days of each red star) where you see red stars on the phenograms. This type of analysis has never been done before on this genus, and my publication is the first actual evidence that both of these species have 4 annual broods in the SE U.S. What I am getting at is that you could look for adult C. securifera the entire month of May and your success would be minimal to none at all.

Regarding semiochemicals for the genus Smerinthus, you probably would have to special order such things. The only persons I know who have been successful developing lures for sphingidae are some independent researchers in Japan.

Now attempting to attract adult males using females can be troublesome. First, do you know when males of your target species actually fly in to females? E.g. just because females are in a calling posture with protruding abdomens, that has nothing to do with when males fly to these females. E.g. here at my home females of C. securifera call round the clock, but precisely at daybreak, the sky fills with 50-100+ male securifera attempting to mate with the females. see attached you-tube video. And these females kept seperated from the incoming males continue nonstop to call until 1600 hrs to 1800 hours. Interestingly around 1600 hours, C. promethea also begins flying into the calling C. securifera females. This would not happen naturally in the wild as C. securifera would have mated 9-10 hours earlier in the day and there would naturally not be securifera females calling in mid-late afternoon. Others have documented C. angulifera being attracted to C. promethea for probably the same reasons I stated for securifera and promethea.

Another species S. cecropia which females may call for half a day, but precisely at 0300 hours, males in huge numbers descend upon the calling females as if by majic. Most commonly encountered problems are caused by using reared materials in the wild, as reared specimens are almost always never synchronized with the natural phenology of the wild specimens.

One thing you may need to do in attempting to call males to females is these activities require locations where the air can freely flow over the females. I found it necessary to build a large screened cage 4' x 4' x 4' to allow females inside to attract males on the outside. This worked well for many years. Here is a free access 1-minute you tube video of my screened cage in my back yard with 40 or so males of C. securifera being attracted to 3 females newly hatched in mid-day sunlight. I will end by saying "If it was easy, everybody would be doing it".

That publication you mention has about 5-10 errors on every page, cover to cover. I reviewed the first two versions of the manuscripts of this pub. for the author. Sent them back with more red ink than existing black ink. Just looked at one of them a few minutes ago, dated 8-06-2004, three years before publication. After that the author stopped talking with me, except when he wanted something from me. I have learned the hard way not to trust him. I allowed him to visit my home on three occasions, never again.

BTW, I am right now publishing a new species description, one of two new species of sphingidae we discovered right here at our home location about 40 years ago.

free access link: https://independent.academia.edu/VernonAntoineBrouJr

papiliotheona wrote: ↑Thu May 30, 2024 5:58 pm Can you please give the link for this?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 0723001933

Yes, that's correct. New members can only send PMs to moderators or reply to PMs sent to them from other members until they have posted a certain number of times. I cannot remember the number, but it is a mechanism to stop spammers from sending PMs to members.

I believe that if you PM nitinra he will be able to reply to you.

Adam.

I can send you a box of specimens at no charge.

I do need a shipping address. I'm not sure why you can't PM, perhaps one needs a certain number of posts first?

wollastoni wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 10:54 am As long as entomological authorities remain "silent" on that topic, the future of our hobby is indeed at risk. Museum authorities of the world should launch a "give kids a net" campaign.
+ they need to defend the insect trade as Wang, Pierce, Lohman & al did in July 2023 :

"The prodigious reproductive capacity of r-selected insects means that collecting or ranching butterflies from the wild is sustainable if natural habitats are preserved (Bayliss-Smith, 2006; Matiku et al., 2013; Gordon and Ayiemba, 2003; Slone et al., 1997). Sustainable economic profitability might be the most parsimonious explanation for why most traded butterflies are wild-caught. However, this should be examined with an ecosystem service cost-effectiveness analysis. Selling wildlife to preserve wildlife might seem counter-intuitive, but careful analyses that consider local stakeholders in conservation strategies have arrived at similar conclusions involving vertebrates (Di Minin et al., 2016). Unlike their 19th century counterparts, modern collectors for the butterfly trade are stakeholders who depend on pristine habitats for their livelihood, and therefore have a vested interest in habitat conservation. We suggest that the scale and extent of global butterfly trade is best seen as a practice of sustainable, targeted resource extraction that has considerable potential in promoting the conservation of insect habitats."

Can you please give the link for this?

Thanks for the kind words Adam, I think you're the only one who might read this.

For my life, I've been a lumper, not a splitter. As you very well know from your own work & collaboration, we now know that some splitting is very appropriate. In the case of the eastern Tiger Swallowtails, I can't say I agree with my traditional views- the Mid Summer Tiger (MST) is closer to canadensis, but clearly it most certainly is NOT. So what to do?

In the case of MST, it's not a simple hybrid, it's a recombinant hybrid that while still hybridizing at the edges of the range has a generally stable, self-sustaining population. It's not islanded totally by geography or time, but in many respects it is, effectively, islanded with a small isthmus.

The whole concept of recombinant hybridization and speciation is interesting. Fish researchers have found similar cases in African lakes, but the differentiating populations have no physical or temporal boundaries- they just are doing it "because" (because we don't understand yet.)

As far as haplotypes and trees, now that's really interesting. Some regional groups of NA swallowtails branch off from others nearby, based on a very, very distant ancestor. Very very cool stuff. Of course you've seen this already in your latest (?) paper, and others on Charaxes, etc.

The summary I supposed is the word you used: "complex"; these are complexes of related butterflies. I don't even want to see a well researched and complete Speyeria tree.

In the end, I'm stupified we don't know more about Tiger Swallowtails. I will never have all the answers, but at least with specimens and data records, the future might reveal much more than we could imagine. So I keep chugging away on something that even most Lepidopterists don't care about.

I must say Chuck is doing a great job trying to unravel what seems to be a very complex situation. This thread is really interesting, not only because of all the photos and data presented, but also the intrigue of getting to see all the issues as the data is accumulated. I am really looking forward to eventually finding out what the DNA results bring up and how they correlate with wing pattern differences. However, it may be necessary to include many more genes than COI before a clear picture starts to develop. Unfortunately that generally involves a large budget, unless adding only a few more genes produces better resolution. Certain groups of Papilionidae I have worked on just produce a jumbled mess using COI alone, whereas some actually produce good trees with high reliability. We can hope that the Tigers fall into the latter category.

Adam.