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It's astounding how many different species of insects you can find even if you limit yourself to just a fairly small area.

In the book "Life on a Little Known Planet: A Biologist's View of Insects and Their World" [1] the author says that he used to set out insect traps every summer at his home in--if I remember correctly--New England, and every summer he would find species that were unknown to him. He'd then check the literature to identify them and every summer would find that he'd caught some that were unknown to science.

The author's research was on parasitic wasps and he was one of the world's foremost authorities on the subject, yet his summer traps would even trap parasitic wasps that were not yet known to science.

Think about that--this was not in some remote area that humans had barely reached where finding unknown plants and animals is something you'd expect. This was at a professor's house in a part of the planet that has been extensively explored for centuries.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Life-Little-Known-Planet-Biologists/d...

I'm surprised, but not too surprised.

I read somewhere that there can be over 10 billion virus particles in a liter of sea water. There's no way we know everything in there. It's easier to see and count larger things, but we're really just point sampling a HUGE space when it comes to looking at living creatures.

And life is kind of a continuum - it's not like one day a neandrathal gave birth to a human and that was that - each new generation is a new level of the tree evolving in a certain direction and slightly different than anything that came before it.

One of my previous advisors, while working on a PhD in sociality in insects, had a lot of time to spend in a front lawn in New York City. Trained to observe he recorded hundreds of species, on that lawn. Another insect curator I worked with (also from Texas), collected in a nearby park throughout his lifetime (still is I'm sure). Collected well over 1000 species of beetles, alone. Both were highly, highly trained, in a way that is increasingly disappearing. There are many, many other stories like this. That training included as much how and where to look as it did technical assessment (e.g. what you needed to see to identify species). Because of a whole pile of factors, stubborn old-timers, new technologies, lack of foresight and vision, we're losing that expertise rapidly. By the time we need answers from the vast genetic experiments that come from the lab that is Earth's evolution, we'll not know where, or how to look for them.
What do you mean? There are more stem PhDs than ever before. Field work is still happening. More than ever perhaps with the ever present desire for genomic surveys of natural populations. Not just in academic work but in industry supported work as well.
In 7th grade we had a project to collect, euthanize with alcohol and pin insects for classification and study. Every kid in that class, had to collect 50-100 insects with zero training and most were quite successful. I'm not sure this means anything, but I was amazed at the diversity of the species collected by my classmates.
I think it's more so that people aren't interested. If you trained a neural network to classify species using photos taken through a binocular microscope, I'm sure you could match human performance. If you used hyperspectral photos you could achieve superhuman performance.
Here's his inaturalist profile: https://www.inaturalist.org/users/256619

19,715 observations of 3,892 species. Incredible contributor!

Some of these are amazing https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/233201888
https://www.inaturalist.org/lifelists/cmeckerman?view=tree&t... says he has 1044 different species of the order Lepidoptera.
It's sad to me that the 'common' buckeye seems to be anything but common these days, it's always been one of my favorites to look at.
Thanks! Wanted to see more pictures like these in the article.
Moths are aliens in their looks and vast diversity. My backyard favorite is hummingbird hawk-moth.
I've heard of these, they sound amazing!

We get the odd Hercules moth in our backyard. Doesn't look anything like a bird close up, but it's so massive that when they get stuck in the house your first thought is that it's a bird or bat.

Another cool thing we get is jumping spiders that imitate ants so they can hunt them - both green ants (an endemic weaver ant we get here) and another large metallic silver ant species I don't know a lot about. The spiders share the colouring of each species and walk backwards amongst them - their walking style changes and the abdomen looks like the head of the ant. They're rare, I've only observed them a couple of times over the years here, but it's wild to watch them do their thing.

I believe the hawk moths are the moths that metamorphose from tomato and tobacco hornworm caterpillars. The moths are great pollinators so they are very good to have around the garden. I have seen them hitting everything from datura to yucca blooms.

If you find hornworms eating your tomatoes you may be tempted to squash them. Instead of doing that you can remove them and put them to work on any other plant in the Solanacea family like peppers, potatoes, eggplants, or better yet put them on some jimsonweed, or one of the other weeds in the nightshade (Solanacea) family or some of the nettles.

I saw those for the first time in 2022 and I was amazed that it existed. What a strange creature. I thought it was actually a hummingbird at first, and then its details emerged to me and I realized what I was seeing. So strange. And huge, for a bug!

It was cruising around at dusk feeding on nectar.

I'm partial to the Death's-head Hawkmoth and the Ceanothus Silkmoth.
they are great, but only seen them in my front yard, and abroad.
For those that don't know, there's a double entendre on the story title.

The "moth man" is a well known urban legend in northeastern USA. A movie was even filmed on the premise [1] . A "texas mothman" playfully may suggest to some that the terror is "migrating"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mothman_Prophecies_(film...

The Mythical Man-Moth

-- Apologies to Fred Brooks

As a native of Ohio who has visited The Moth Man Museum[0], I take certain exception to this region being called "northeastern USA."

It's close, but it's not quite there [1].

0: https://www.mothmanmuseum.com/

1: https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/united-sta...

And mothman was allegedly seen in Chicago too! Kyle Kinane does a fantastic Chicago Mothman accent: https://podcasts.apple.com/lu/podcast/chicago-mothman/id1139...
It is pretty amazing the amount of diversity any small plot of land will show. I used to start my days going over my yard on my hands and knees hunting mushrooms, no idea how many I identified but it is certainly hundreds, someday I will count. Had a brief stint with insects and bugs but they turned out to be far too high strung for me after all that time i spent watching mushrooms grow.
> Moths aren’t just pretty to look at; they’re also important pollinators and a major source of food for birds and bats. But moths, like insects overall, are declining in both raw numbers and species diversity. Eckerman says recent studies have shown at least a 30 percent decline in insect abundance around the world over the past few decades. The likely culprits are pesticides and the loss of habitat to urban development. A threat to insects such as moths is a threat to the plants they pollinate and all the creatures above them in the food chain.

It's amazing the drop in biodiversity of insects that comes from habitat destruction, monoculture, pesticide (ab)use. As a kid we'd drive across the prairies and have to wipe literal goop off the windshield and side view mirrors at each gas station...

We planted native prairie plants throughout our yard roughly sequenced that something is always flowering. This morning I saw at least a dozen wild bees on one bunch of goldenrod* and nothing on the annuals next to it.

* https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services... (not invasive for my region)

On the other hand, the box tree moth seems to be doing fine - to the dismay of many gardeners. And boy oh boy can they ravage boxwood hedges. Unfortunately, insecticides are the only effective option in Europe and America. In Asia (where it's native) there are some natural predators, so the damage is limited. Birds aren't interested in the caterpillars. Some types of hornets are, but introducing them into non-native habitat brings other problems.

Hotter than normally springs and falls don't help either; the moth thrives in the warmer weather and can go through as many as four cycles (generations) during a single year.

https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/terrestrial/invertebrate...

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant-pests-diseases/box-tree-mot...

I remember the first time someone pointed out this lack of bug splatter to me and I was a bit scared about humanity's fate, but then someone else pointed out that our cars are a LOT more aerodynamic now. Not sure which side to land on here.
>Moths aren’t just pretty to look at

Interestingly I know two people who are absolutely terrified of moths and cannot stand to even be in the same room.

On iNaturalist there are many people who monitor a specific area like their garden. Those contain links to such projects:

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/home-projects-umbrella

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/museum-grounds-and-gard...

There probably are a lot more such projects on it.

As a kid, in Toronto, I joined the Junior Field Naturalists in 1951 and attended many lectures and exploration field trips. I found it very informative, however I became a Chemist later on. https://www.rom.on.ca/en/romrecollects/stories/keyword/junio...
I’m more impressed by the fact that 550 species visited his yard. Must have a really boss yard.
I'm in a suburb in Austin, I did chop out part of the lawn to plant a pollinator garden, but it's nothing really special. I made a project for my house, and I'm at 550 species total, 250 Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies). That's really just a result of regular observations. Every month I pick up at least a few new species. In the spring and fall I pick up a bunch, typically. Keeps adding up over time, and with moths there's a lot of species out there.
Is not really difficult to find this amount of biodiversity on most wild temperate gardens. With some effort you can easily have a collection of two thousand species of plants on a middle size garden if you want, plus animals attracted by those plants.

On tropical ones the number should be much, much higher.

Probably does, but if you pay close attention to the moths around your house over a year, I expect you'll exceed your estimates by an order of magnitude at least. They're incredibly diverse. (And many are super small, that you probably don't normally pay attention to or realize are moths.)
Only 10k more to go. There really are an obscene number of moth (and beetle) species.
I just saw an Ailanthus Webworm moth this morning in Michigan and was struck by how different it looked from most insects I see here. They're native to the south but have apparently been starting to adapt to colder conditions and move further north thanks to the massive explosion of the horribly invasive Tree of Heaven, which is somehow still legal for nurseries to sell even though it is extremely aggressive and is a host for Spotted Lanternflies.

Anyways, since I've gotten into native plant gardening I have gained a huge appreciation for insects. You can find some really amazing things in your own yard if you pay attention.

This man is probably one of the very few who have read hundreds or possibly thousands of obscure Wikipedia pages about various species and families of moths. Some of the most obscure Wikipedia pages are about species of moth.
Someone IDing moths isn't using Wikipedia.
I like this sort of thing. Someone exploring his own little environment. It seems like the sort of thing we should be hearing more about. Maybe some high schools should start promoting some of this.
Texas yard is the size of a small country
Nice! I've got a house iNat project with an ever expanding pollinator garden so I can pick up more species without having to travel. I'm at ~250 Lepidoptera.
Almost completely irrelevant, but I was astonished one day as I walked through the outskirts of Dallas: there was a yard nearly at eye level with a retaining wall, and the grass was overflowing with snails.

I don’t know how many times in my life I’ve actually seen a snail outside of water, it’s very rare for me, but this was effectively an infestation. Surreal.

https://archive.is/zjEuP
Texas Monthly can go toe-to-toe with the New Yorker.
I saw a plume moth the other day and thought it was an IUD lol
his "yard" seems to be pretty huge
keep a little moth under my pillow for the "moth man"
OT: it’s amazing how fewer bugs, inspects, etc exist today than when I was a kid.

I still have vivid memories of car trips and the windowshield & the front of car - being completely covered with dead bugs.

I have to imagine all those bugs were food for moths.

It’s only a Moth Man if he comes from the Point Pleasant region. Otherwise it’s just a weird entomologist.