I’ve been a bit remiss at posting regular challenges, so I’ll try to pick up the pace. Who can tell me anything about this butterfly? The most you’re getting is that it is from the Western half of the US. Credit for family, genus or species andridiculouscredit for subspecies and where it is from.
Euphydryas anicia cloudcrofti
Tedmanaged to pretty quickly ID this lep with stunning accuracy for a beetle-guy. You lep-ers reading this should hang your head in shame for not jumping on it faster.
As mentioned in the comments, this butterfly only flies around the resort town of Cloudcroft, New Mexico in the Sacramento Mountains. For years they have been fighting to have this listed as an endangered species, but have failed at every attempt (the most recent rejection was August 2009). The town relies almost exclusively on winter ski resorts and developers have put up a successful fight against protection. The entire area is within the Lincoln National Forest, but they have only closed the area to butterfly collecting, not development. When asking the forest service about this butterfly they unequivocally state that the checkerspot is endangered (even though it’s not). Of course they do not want you to collect it – but if you offered a few million to develop its habitat, that’s a different story.
It was a beautiful day today in the bay area, so I headed up to Napa and the Pope Valley. I was scouting some new territory for a small flower moth, Heliolonche celeris, that apparently is waiting for more contiguous nice weather to emerge. This season has been a bit tardy because of all of the cold and rain, but I hold out hopes for a successful return visit in a few weeks. ຢ່າງໃດກໍຕາມ, I did come across a handful of beautiful microleps. All of these moths are in the genusAdelaand familyAdelidae (or some would sayຂ້າພະເຈົ້າncurvariidae). They are commonly known as “fairy moths” because they appear to dance over patches of flowers – which apparently fairies love to do. It looked like males were defending a small area, with two to three at a time, twirling around each-other a few inches above the blossoms. I assume these dances were territorial because no mating was observed. While females have long antennae, the males take it to excess. I collected a nice series but Ihaven’t nailed down the species yet – how many do you see? ຂອບໃຈ, all of theAdelidaewere covered in a 1969 paper by Jerry Powell, who also happens to live down the street from me.
After looking through the collections here at the CAS, and reading the monograph, it looks like most of these areAdela trigrapha. It is a common Adelid of the San Francisco Bay area and most of the coastal ranges of CA. Variation is noted to be considerable, with broken and unbroken bands as well as variation of the red on the crown. The other Adelid is easily ID’d toAdela flammeusella.
Another installment of Genius of the Press, and perhaps a bit of a softball. (Yikes these are easy to find) Who can tell me whats wrong withບົດຄວາມນີ້?
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), but it must be approaching 30,000. My Honda Accord may not be a typical field vehicle, but it makes the distance substantially more affordable. Of course the two flat tires and cracked windshield don’t help. You can easily tell that I lived in southern California with that giant blob of flags. Most of those are focused in Santa Barbara county, which yielded two new species and dozens of county records. Arizona comes second with two 10 day trips with each night in a different location. I then broke free of the southwest last summer and drove a long loop through the midwest over the course of two and a half weeks. I pulled in around 4,000 lepidoptera and have just started putting the finishing touches on the last of the specimens. ຮອດດຽວນີ້, only one new species – a sole specimen of a small Acrolophidae from western Texas (determined by Peter Jump who is writing the MONA fascicle on the group). Plenty left to still ID.
On the board for this year: A trip to Leavenworth, Washington for the 2010 Lepidopterists’ Society meeting. The two week collecting trip will shoot north to Washington then loop east through Idaho, Utah and Nevada on the way home. But as always, Arizona and Mexico are beaconing. And now that I live in Berkeley I will have to get into the Sierra a few more times this year!
I am really at a loss for understanding yet anotherpositive acupuncture studythat was as well designed as my 8th grade science fair project. ອະນຸຍາດ, I was a nerdy science kid, but I could do a better job drunk. I think I should conduct a followup study in which I test the efficacy of porcupines tossed at your back. It would certainly be more amusing; and full of just about as much scientific value. Not to mention, porcupines are kinda cute.
The real problems with the study:
Unblinded
n=15. Their x² tests may have resulted in a significant response, but in no imagination of any universe does 15 equal a statistically significant sampling of any population, anywhere.
No negative control. They treated all of their patients with acupuncture or vitamins. Vitamin B complex is a treatment (still a very poorly supported one), and only a positive control. Whose to say smell didn’t naturally improve over the course of the study? The authors can not.
So my question is, what can possibly be the motivation for this study? I can imagine how this was dreamt up, around the coloring books one day “Hey Doc Julia, acupuncture sure works huh?” “Why yes it does fellow idiot, let’s create a really crappy study to show just that!”. Take a look atmy older acupuncture postfor more links and a bit more discussion on why ancient chinese medicine is a waste of money. Of course if you test 15 people you can scrape together a positive result for just about anything. But as you start to introduce larger and more tightly controlled studies the positive effects start to shrink.
Ridiculous. And now that I look at it, my 8th grade science fair project was conducted with two sets of controls, blinded, and had a sample size of 18 (antibacterial effectiveness of kitchen cleaners). ຂໍຂອບໃຈທ່ານ, I’ll kindly take my position at the University of Cologne Medical Center now.
For those who saw the FOX interview with MSU entomologist Dr. Cognato (ຕົກລົງ, for those who didn’t, here it is), you will be interested to hear his side of the story.
Take the time to register (ຂໍໂທດ, it’s annoying but I couldn’t find it anywhere else) and read a response to the interview by Dr. Cognato, ທີ່ນີ້. In summary, he basically confirmed what was suspected, that they weren’t 100% straightforward with him in the first place and only gave him about six hours to prep. It is nice to hear that Tucker Carlson was actually interested in the entomolgy collection (although, perceived interest is a key tactic in the reporters tool-belt to disarm his interviewee…). ຢ່າງໃດກໍ່ຕາມ, Cognato did a good job battling off the mindless, anti-science, right wing, propaganda machine. It is clear that he was put in a difficult situation, FOX came to him and wanted to discuss the collection. He knew he wasn’t going to be the best prepared for the interview (I know I sure wouldn’t be either!), but had to stand up for the collection in fear that they might have trampled on it without any fair rebuttal. It is sad we have almost no source of unbiased news nowadays. If you followed this story you should take the time to read about how it really happened.
