The clouds broke this afternoon in San Francisco and the sun began to shine. The upcoming warm weather induced an all too familiar feeling, one that I should be out collecting insects and not sitting indoors! While I have already been to a handful of places this spring, I have a long season of collecting ahead. Looking forward I couldn’t help but to reflect on the past two spectacular years the west has given me. To illustrate my addiction, here is a caption of my Google Earth GPS points.
Each flag represents a separate collecting event (disregard the yellow pins), between fall 2007 and winter 2009. I have not kept track of the miles for dedicated collecting trips (perhaps to avoid shock), pero debe ser achegando 30,000. Meu Honda Accord pode non ser un vehículo típico campo, pero fai a distancia substancialmente máis accesible. Claro que os dous pneumáticos ocos e parabrisas rachado non axudan. Pode facilmente dicir que eu vivín no sur de California que blob xigante de bandeiras. A maioría das persoas están enfocados en Santa Barbara County, que rendeu dúas novas especies e decenas de rexistros do condado. Arizona vén en segundo lugar con dous 10 paseos de un día a cada noite nun lugar diferente. Eu, entón, rompe libre do verán suroeste pasada e levou un longo loop través do Midwest ao longo de dúas semanas e media. Puxei en torno a 4,000 Lepidoptera e ten só comezou dando os últimos retoques no último dos espécimes. Ata agora, só unha nova especie – un único espécime dun pequeno acrolophidae de Texas occidental (determinada por Peter salto que está escribindo o fascículo MONA sobre o grupo). Plenty esquerda aínda ID.
Na tarxeta para este ano: Unha viaxe para Leavenworth, Washington para o 2010 lepidopterists’ Reunión da Sociedade. A viaxe de recollida de dúas semanas vai tirar ao norte de Washington logo repetir a leste mediante Idaho, Utah e Nevada, camiño de casa. Pero, como sempre, Arizona e México están beaconing. E agora que eu vivo en Berkeley eu vou ter que entrar na Sierra máis algunhas veces este ano!
Mapa legal – Como fai?
Eu teño un mapa con forza na parede do meu estudo con un pino vermello glasshead en cada localidade recollida que visitei unha vez 1982 (si, Eu son aquel vello!). Ningunha pregunta ao oeste eo México son onde está, but in recent years I’ve become quite enamored with the Great Plains – the whole place seems to have been sort of unfairly ignored.
I connect my GPS to Google Earth, which allows me to download the waypoints and tracks. The end product is incidental, but it’s really wonderful to have all of your collecting points mapped automatically! I can also go backwards from my database, with a click of a button it creates a google earth map of the distribution of my specimens.
Well heck – sounds like I need to get a better GPS, since mine has no download capabilities.
BTW, I’m really liking your blog. There are lots of insect bloggers out there, but not that many who really know what they’re talking about. (And I just noticed the linkback – thanks.)
I suppose you could achieve the same goal by manually entering your waypoints and placing a pin on google earth. A bit slower though when you collect as much as me (I assume you do!).
Thanks for the comments, I’m really enjoying this medium, wish I had started a while ago! I agree, there are very few good entomology blogs, but yours is one of the best.
You should make a trip to central NY…our woods are packed with moths. In fact, the porch light has been flooded with moths, I should take some pics and make you ID them 😉
Im going to have to steal (er, I mean imitate) your photography set up for the lab. I had to take some photos of teeny-tiny hymenopteran parasitoids for a Canadian collaborator last week and the pics turned out hideous 🙁
I rematou só enviándolle os espécimes, que entón envolvía un novo conxunto de dores de cabeza cos costumes.