We found this roach during our new house pre purchase inspection. Very concerned it’s a roach that can be hard to remove once inside. What type?

I agree with all the above. For me, a physical scientific collection is priceless and cannot be replicated with photographs of live individuals.

Here are a couple more of my Tearful Underwing
(Catocala lacrymosa) captures featuring that
"marbled" appearance which only shows itself
periodically here and there. Quite noticeable
against the general torrent of "typical" ones
that I've encountered.

Our Youthful Underwing (Catocala subnata) is a
large (80-90mm) species with a yellow/orange
appearance to its hindwings. In my general area
it remains an infrequent visitor to light or bait.
Been a few years since I've encountered one....



The similarly sized yet, much more common
Catocala neogama is easily confused with this one.

Photos of wild insects are just pretty pictures, even in some of my guide books, by well known persons have less than stellar photos, and I take pictures as well, they go in the digital photo frame.
Next time use a better acronym.

One major problem with "butterfly watching", whether it be by NABA members or unaffiliated individuals, is that many species cannot reliably be identified from photos alone, some need at least examination of genitalia for accurate identification.

Recently a colleague and I were asked to review a paper on butterflies of a SE Asian country based solely on photographic records of living specimens. Particularly for Lycaenidae and Hesperiidae but also in some other groups (such as Satyrinae) a single photo is often not diagnostic (e.g. both upperside and underside need to be seen), and many specimens could not be accurately identified to individual species even from photos where both sides were at least partially visible. Some species cannot be identified beyond 'species-group' from photos at all, even from superb photos of pinned specimens. That is why scientific collections are invaluable, and private collections also contain specimen data which may be important in future.

Adam.

You could state 'very rarely' to indicate less often than 'rarely', or if you have only seen a single specimen with these blue scales you could state 'blue scales were present on the forewing of a single individual among xxx specimens examined'.

Adam.

OK, so how does one say "they don't have this blue on the FW" without acknowledging this one friggin' specimen? "rarely" seems to be imply perhaps it's more common.

Bunch of tree huggers with big hearts and few brains.

"we are shifting the paradigm from collectors with nets, capturing and killing butterflies, to enthusiasts with cameras and binoculars, capturing beautiful images of live butterflies in nature." That's nice. We need more photos of misidentified Viceroys.



"NABA has amassed the largest database of butterfly sightings and population abundances in the world." Rubbish, pure rubbish.

"NABA envisions a future where wild butterflies thrive in healthy habitats, none are threatened or endangered, and all people can enjoy observing them in nature." Impossible. Many taxa are threatened and endangered from elements other than man. Thousands of butterfly taxa have gone extinct before man, some will after. It is impossible to have "all people" observe them in nature.

In order to save butterfly taxa we have to know them. That requires dissection, grinding up for DNA, and collections. NABA's trumpet is based on the hard work of those the seek to put out of operation.

kevinkk wrote: ↑Fri Apr 26, 2024 4:09 pm
What I typically do from time to time, is rearrange things, and put them in "better" places.

I broke down and spent a weekend doing that last year. What a nightmare. I'd been sticking specimens wherever they fit physically, and I had taxa spread all over in the wrong places. If you want to talk about "can't find" god I had it. But I have the same problems w/ institutional collections- a taxa spread between the primary collection, a donated personally collection, pro tem, and "wherever" so it's not just me.

I'm glad you sorted it out Chuck.
What I typically do from time to time, is rearrange things, and put them in "better" places. That's when they go missing.

Thanks guys for your compassion.

This all started actually a couple days ago when I couldn't find them.

Yesterday I made a concerted effort to find them. I went through all my NA Papilio drawers (minus the machaon-types) looking. Four times. Studied each drawer. Nothing.

As you probably observed, I was frustrated.

I've learned when something doesn't make sense, and you can't make sense of it, walk away and give it time. Last year I was re-mating two mechanical assemblies and suddenly they wouldn't go together. I pushed, I tried again, I tried and tried. I used a rubber mallet- no go. I pulled out the steel hammer and thought- wait, I'd better put this down. The next day they inexplicably slid together.

And so today. I pulled out suspect drawer #1 and looked again. No go based on chronological date. I was was looking at unique morphological characteristics when I noticed one specimen had an extra pink label. Ah hah. There must be another one- and sure there was. As it turns out, in writing the description paper I had recorded the wrong day one one specimen, and was exactly one year off on the other! There was no error in my collating- it was the human error in transcribing label to keyboard.

So I'm good. Now just have to take new photos (after all that.)

Check the drawer dates. Maybe you mixed up the chronological order.

Presumably you put the drawer somewhere easy to access, and have just forgotten where you put it.

Hopefully you will find it soon.

Adam.

!!!!!! Dude. I hope you locate them. If not, you can always just find another one and designate that as a holotype…as annoying as that might be. Or if you want, I can designate one from my collection.

I bought a ring light, experimented with it. Now time to re-photo the type specimens for publication.

I cannot find them.

This shouldn't be hard- all specimens, drawer after drawer after drawer, are collated chronologically.

And the last drawer ends just before the capture dates of the type pair. So I'm actually missing an entire #*^%@# drawer.

I can't imagine anyone came and stole it, and I never took it out of the house.


Arrrrgggghhhh!

kevinkk wrote: ↑Thu Apr 25, 2024 3:47 pm I am missing the point of the original post.
..., step out of their field of expertise and rub elbows with the experienced.

The motive isn't to get an answer. There are a myriad of reasons bots and scams post inaccurate stuff:
1. to identify the gullible, and identify those to avoid. This may be at the individual level, or forum level
2. to gain posts in order to appear trustworthy when it comes time to defraud
3. to see how easy it is the register & post/ get past any gate keepers (for future use)
4. to establish sleeper accounts that will be used sometimes years later
5. to find sites/ accounts that have PM-to-email and/ or file storage to use for illicit and harder-to-track crime.

Basically for crime of some sort.

When I see a bot/ potential fraud, the first thing I do is search for some copy/paste phrase. Sometimes you'll find the same thing all over the internet (hint: that's a dead give-away). This one though was tailored for this forum; note that "clothes moths", Permathrin, "west coast", and "NYC" have all come up sometimes regularly here. Scientific names appear daily on here. Throw in some scientific names available in seconds, and it's obvious it was tailored for us.

Why were we targeted? Probably fraud. If someone had taken it seriously and posted a serious response that's a flag of gullibility. Then see how long you can go back-and-forth with the gullible to see how gullible they are. Then watch them for a year. Then six months later hit them with a PM offering something for money, or even get them to click a link that infects their computer. Bingo.

All these conclusions may be accurate. Other than childish amusement, I am missing the point of the original post.
Even without being an expert on clothes moths, I found the premise to be virtually impossible, this is what often happens when people,
or robots, step out of their field of expertise and rub elbows with the experienced.