The true cost of an accurate microlepidopteran ID

[Deb London]

I had my first moth-ing "taster" session today. I could listen to experts all day. But then find I don't have time to ask all the questions I have.

Today I heard that it was prohibitively expensive to buy all the books you need to study micro moths and ID them fully. I haven't been able to find out much more than this from the internet, although a well known moth website confirms this.

Traditionally, moth fieldguides have concentrated on the so-called "macro-moths", of which there are around 800 regular British species. To study all of Britain's species including the often very interesting microlepidoptera, requires an expensive library of reference material.

UKmoths

Can anyone add more details? What is the cost/how many recommended books are there? What is involved in the ID and what are the pitfalls? What other equipment is needed (microscopes for example)?

Just curious (as always).

[Uv moth notingha]

Um ............micro moths are somewhat tricky ...with over 1500 species some of which will need to be disected for proper identification ..not that im a micro moth genuis my self (though i have been mothing for a year or so )
, also some of the mircos are bigger than the macros , somewhat confusing stuff . As for a good guide book , British Pyralid Moths :A guide to their identification by Goater , Senior and Dyke is 30 pounds but only covers 200 species , but they are the some of biggest and easyest to identify ..... I basicly qoute from OPAL's mothing PDF guide ....
Ta
UVMOTH

[nutmeg]

It's not easy. I find I usually look online for assistance and there are several good resources in addition to WAB (I'll probably miss some, but these are good to start):

UK moths
Norfolk Moths
Hantsmoths
Back Garden Moths (great for ID from photos if possible)

These will say if there are confusion species and if gen det is required for accurate ID.

Narrowing it down is easiest once you have a feel for whether the moth is a tortrix, or pyralid etc - you can then wade through photos. Unfortunately, sometimes I just don't know where to start! Then I ask on a forum - or contact my county recorder.

There's a useful new publication: Bird-dropping Tortrix Moths of the British Isles A Field Guide to the Bird-dropping Mimics by Jon Clifton and Jim Wheeler. It covers 59 species - a fraction of the micros - but should help greatly with these.

Some other publications have some micros in them. I'm looking forward to Richard Lewington's micro guide, but not due out for a while yet. If it's anything like the Field Guide to the Moths of Great Britain and Ireland by Paul Waring, Martin Townsend & Richard Lewington it'll be well worth the wait.

I don't, at the moment, try to get accurate species ID if it will require gen det and am happy for my own records to go down as an agg. of the confusion species. My county recorder would take examples and ID them if I did want species ID.

[GuyF]

There are a few guides on some of the more well known micro groups such as the one mentioned by UVmoth, and the recently published guide to the "Bird-dropping Tortrix Moths of the British Isles"! The closest to a complete guide to micros so far is the (yet to be completed) series "The Moths and Butterflies of Great Britain and Ireland", often called 'mogbi' for short! I think you'd need to be quite well off to own the whole set, each volume (9 of them so far, as far as I can tell) seems to cost around £60-80 new or £30-40 second hand! I've had a leaf through some of these books and they look excellent, but a bit too expensive for me. However, there is a new micro book on the horizon, illustrated by Richard Lewington who did the amazing artwork for the Waring and Townsend macro moth guide among other things, which should hopefully appear in the next few years - I'm already very excited! I doubt it will be cheap, but I'm hoping it'll be less than owning the 'mogbi' series! Here's a taster from Richard's website - http://www.richardlewington.co.uk/st...jpg.cached.jpg

I expect you would need a good microscope if you wanted to identify all the micros you see, but it should be possible to sort out the majority without this and I'm usually happy to record the tricky ones as 'sp.' or 'agg.'

A lot of people seem to manage very well with micros without any reference guides by using various websites such as UKmoths. I haven't really given the micros the time that they deserve yet but I certainly intend to, there are some real stunners among them!
G

[earthdragon64]

There are also some moth groups on Yahoo, there is UKmoths, Scottishmoths and GMSMoths, which is for those taking part in the Garden Moth Survey.

There are some very knowledgable people on all three groups who are happy to help with IDs. On each one you can create an album and upload photos and ask for help with ID which is usually given quickly.

I probably use Scottish moths most, for obvious reasons, but all are really good resources.

Regards, Audrey.

[Deb London]

Thanks all for lots of interesting information.

Thanks Guy, mogbi is probably the literature referred to, and over £600 the figure.