After a disappointing, mothless night, we came back to the same site armed with a blacklight. And we definitely got what we wanted:
As you can see, we had our work cut out for us. There were swarms of moths! It was such an exciting find after having so much trouble with our setup. There were too many moths to count!
Before this trip, all moths looked the same to me, so I was skeptical when starting this diversity project. But when you look a little closer, it's amazing how many species you can find at one little light bulb, even amongst species that look similar. We cataloged 65 species so far, but it's probably a huge underestimate considering the huge variety we found at the blacklight that we couldn't even count. It blew my mind. I will never question the power of insects again!
We also found a lot of other critters that were just as cool as the moths:
I wonder why they glow like that?
This gecko wasn't very happy when I caught him off the wall (good thing they have little teeth).
This praying mantis came out of no where and landed on Elizabeth's laptop! Clearly he took advantage of our blacklight.
This froggie was soo cool!
And friendly too!
Finally, we found this tarantula hiding under a rock (I'll let him stay under there).
Hopefully we have more awesome nights like this!
Liz, Christine, and Ellen
Very neat.
ReplyDeleteWonderful photography and written with a real sense of enthusiasm.
Keep up the good work.
Turns out the gecko is an introduced Mediterranean gecko.
ReplyDeletewhen was this gecko introduced? were there any geckos around there before, like native gecko species?
ReplyDeleteI have no idea but it would be interesting to find out!
ReplyDelete