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.
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.
The average number of legs of living things is 0.01.
"If you count up all the animals in the world, the average number of legs each animal has is 0.01 legs. This is because the huge numbers of nematodes in the world, which have no legs. There are 10 to the power of 22 nematodes in the world, which means there are 100 times more nematodes than mites in the world, and 1,000 times more nematodes than insects. One nematode lives as a parasite in the human eye that can grow up to 7cm in length."
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 completely understand your point. However, an insect capture and in the hands of an untrained student is arguably probably enduring pain and suffering. So, euthanize does fit, tragically.
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.
I'm very active on iNaturalist. The name suggestions made there by image recognition, at least for the genus I work with, is a complete and utter joke. >98% of name suggestions for that group are incorrect. As soon as a genus becomes diverse, it classifies everything as a single species instead of a genus. It does not have ability to recognize 'the unknown'. Most of my time on that website is wasted on clearing up gross incorrect name suggestions from AI that people accept without any checks of plausibility. Even with species that have >2000 confirmed observations, it still incorrectly suggests the name for obviously completely unrelated species. You didn't take the time to explain what you mean with 'hyperspectral' but I'm assuming it just introduces a new dataset where we start all over.
Seek by iNaturalist got a lot of very positive press here on HN for some reason, but it's crazy. I assume Seek is why iNaturalist classifies everything as a single species with no possibility of 'unknown' - as Seek views the world, the goal of classifying is to produce a species name, and accuracy isn't a concern.
I have a photo of an elephant seal that Seek informs me is actually a clouded monitor lizard.
I also have two photos of identical plants growing inches apart from each other that Seek informs me are unrelated.
Hyperspectral imaging is about collecting images in more than three bands of color (red, green, blue) as perceived by humans. Lots of things look very different in the IR and UV spectra, especially flowers and insects.
hah. tricked you! I rely on folks like you to help me ID the things that the app can obviously not ID correctly :) The best way to get the correct answer on the internet...
I get quite a few genus level suggestions when it can't determine to the species level. I'm not an expert taxonomist so I'm sure there are still many overly specific incorrect assignments.
Maybe something like a solar powered game camera only for ant-sized game. Folks seem to go for the Haikubox[0] for bird sound recognition using BirdNet[1].
I'd love to see the little spiders or maybe silkworms that lay tiny lines in the grass of my neighborhood that shimmer in the low morning light and dew.
Not. You still would need an human to sample this moths, kill them appropriately, and manipulate it carefully to move it in the correct position under your binocular in the correct light and place. They are fragile and you can't do it without an human.
Would be worse than what you have currently. No capability to sample selectively, or to jump in advance to all the interesting parts (instead to do all the walk for every single species).
In the end you will have a worst performance, much more work to do, and none of the trained experts available to put any control in your system. Mimetic moths can deceive even a well trained expert.
AI, DNA, morphology. Biodiversity is vast, and diverse. Figuring out the clusters within it (there a huge range of concepts of what a species [== clusters] is), and figuring out how that cluster can be meaningfully applied to issues that affect humans takes time, a lot of time. We commonly say in our research group that all of these are just another tool, we should embrace them all, but we can't escape the time it takes to work with the data at all levels. All the sequencing, AI, and even plain-old pictures in the world doesn't matter if you don't know how to catch the beast. And there are millions and millions of things to look at, all over the world. Again, in working with data at this scope on a day-today basis, not even big data, just broad, I'm struck with how little we can relate to this vastness, and I've been trained for decades to work with it.
We have videos from last years conference that highlight the tech that tries to rapidly barcode species, that can give you a flavour of the complexity involved. This is perhaps the world's leading taxonomists exploring how, practically, to do such: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX_1wdmROhU.
We're going to solve the "species ID" problem for... everything that people can find! Like the completely unidentifiable ladybug my Aunt found in her RV last week in the Texas panhandle—a bizarrely intricate carapace I can't match to any pics of ladybug species anywhere online... What the heck is it! Nobody knows, apparently.
It starts with a unique citizen science project—one with bespoke molecular sensing hardware. (note I said it starts there, not that it reaches fruition immediately!) Check it out here: www.molecularReality.com
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.
Exactly. This is why we overplant dill and tomatoes. We know we're gonna see lots of butterfly and moth traffic so we plant enough and spread it around the garden area so that we still have some available for ourselves. We have a great diversity of bugs, birds, and things on our place so I try to make it as welcoming as possible by planting and maintaining the areas around each garden area with native plants, flowers, and grasses so throughout the season we have lots of activity as new vegetables or fruits bloom in turn. I keep several solar fountain pumps running so that any animals, or insects have a water hole they can depend on. I'm on top of a limestone outcrop here but this year I have my first Leopard frog in one of my fountains. All the fountains are regular gathering spots for yellowjackets, red wasps, bumblebees and other bee types. There's plenty for the frog and the toads on the ground to enjoy.
I don't mind sacrificing any of it as long as it isn't food for grasshoppers. Screw those guys.
What exactly about grasshoppers? I like them hopping around and their gentle sound, started appreciating it after being traumatized by loud cicadas in Southern Europe.
If you only have one then you have the ideal number. Out here in N Texas where I live, I am surrounded by native grasses, wildflowers, trees, etc. Some years there are not many grasshoppers. Those are the good years.
When you are trying to garden at the same time with grasshoppers and you have a drought, they will eat everything that has any hint of moisture.
They girdled one young apple tree, killing it as it was in a growth spurt. The only part alive now are the water sprouts from the root graft and I'm leaving that alive so they can chew on something.
They ate every type of vegetation that I have out here - vegetable plants, fruit tree leaves and bark, nut tree leaves and bark, my olive trees, native wildflowers including salvia, sunflowers, lantana, etc. They even ate the tops out of my walking onions so that the only thing left green and relatively unscathed were three pomegranate bushes that took damage but weren't stripped.
There were so many grasshoppers of several varieties that dozens would fly up at every step - literally a couple dozen per sq meter. I could swing a baseball bat and be guaranteed to hit at least one per swing. It was ridiculous.
The area around my place is being slash-and-burned for a new subdivision. They literally strip the trees, scrape the topsoil to the limestone caprock, scrape the limestone caprock down several feet, haul in topsoil and road base and build streets into the subdivisions where the soil is now deep enough to plant a tree without hitting a rock as long as you don't get ambitious and dig more than three feet down.
As a result, all the flora and fauna and a broad cornucopia of living things show up in my yard since it is still largely untouched and covered by native oaks, elms, hackberries, toothache trees, and a single mesquite that I was glad to see sprout about 25 years ago. I have returned my place to native grasses and wildflowers, clearing a lot of really noxious weeds in the process. All the ordinary things are being squeezed onto the remaining undeveloped land here so I get a bumper crop of grasshoppers. That isn't what I was hoping for but it is what I have ended up with lately.
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!
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"
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.
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.
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.
I have to say seems like wishful thinking. Sure cars have changed and aren't insect traps but at 80km/h bugs splatter on a windshield. The decline of insect biomass has been well reported, e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29045418 although not uniform. I've spent some time in northern areas where the bugs are bad!
This UK study used number plates, which haven't changed form between the two years (2004 and 2021), and have found a decline of just under 60%. Aerodynamics may have something to do with it, but I know from driving through insect-abundant areas recently that you still get plenty of splatter in modern cars.
The number plate is still attached to the car and thus the shape of the rest of the car affects how air moves over it.
How much is hard to say. Aerodynamics is just hard but basically as the car moves through air it pushes air out of the way and this air also pushes other air out of the way and thus elements next to each other will effect each other.
The aerodynamics of our ‘81 VW camper van haven’t changed in 43 years (basically a barn door). We get significantly less bug splatter on the windshield than, say, 20 years ago.
And though I can’t find the link again, it has been claimed that a more aerodynamic vehicle should get more bug splatter. I don’t remember why, attack angle maybe?
Another factor is that the right of way for highways is generally cleared further back (I guess for things like deer strikes). Insects have to go a long way out into a heat island to get to the center of the right of way these days.
I realize it's an entirely irrational phobia. Moths, caterpillars, and grubs absolutely horrify me. It's something to do with them having a combination of exoskeleton-like insect-y parts and soft, fuzzy, or squishy non-insect-y parts.
Actual bugs are OK (though I don't particularly like them). Snails are fine. Slugs are... less fine but tolerable. Moths, caterpillars and grubs make my skin crawl. Sea slugs are the absolute worst.
You're not alone. In the two cases I know, it's siblings who had a bad childhood experience, and now are both terrified of moths and butterflies. Their idea of hell is a butterfly exhibit!
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 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.)
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.
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.
They really should. I know most of the nature documenting I do is totally old hat to anyone actually doing field studies, but the experience is so enriching.
The other day I spent 4 hours recording baby coho salmon in disconnected pools along a creek bed. Coho have been researched enough so I’m not doing anything particularly important, but in the process I learned some really cool stuff:
- The creek bed is absolutely filled with sculpins. A pool perhaps 3 inches deep and 3 feet in diameter could contain over a dozen of them
- Tiny puddles containing perhaps 500ml of water contained half a dozen fish or so; typically sculpins and sticklebacks but occasionally coho fry as well
- As the water levels were lowering, dozens of huge ravens were staked out and waiting for stranded fish. I returned days later and sure enough, every dried body of water had been picked clean
- The sheer number of nymphs, larvae, and adult arthropods was staggering once I looked closely
- Under every rock on the dried creek bed I could find everything from developing insects to animals like frogs hiding out
The amount of life far exceeded what I expected. And the diversity of life from micro to macro was also amazing. To think the creek bed extends several kilometres and it’s essentially all like this for most of it (though much drier higher up). I can’t wait to explore it more. I’m mostly curious how the coho will manage before rains return, and at this point it looks pretty grim. Some pools with at least 100 individuals will almost certainly be okay, but many more smaller pools containing dozens of fish are rapidly draining. The ravens are having an easy summer, I think.
edit: I have some videos and photos here https://steve-adams.me/coho/ (I don't normally share what I record but recently decided I might as well, because I wish more people did).
It doesn't have to be because proximity to meadows or forests in Texas have enormous biodiversity. My mom's tiny 1/3 acre home killed a good 1 lbs. / 1 cu ft of flying critters in one day with a bug zapper.
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.
> I don’t know how many times in my life I’ve actually seen a snail outside of water
Probably depends a lot on where you live. I've lived in several US states and climates and snails were fairly common in most of them, of a variety of species.
I was visiting Irvine California once. I was working back from work around sunset and on the sidewalk under a streetlight were hundreds of snails. I've never seen them congregate like that before.
In many places in Texas, the soil can ruin foundations of single-storey buildings if allowed to cycle between wet and dry. To overcome this, watering the foundation is a requirement to maintain a baseline soil humidity level. Snails thrive in damp conditions.
This is mostly a myth. It's impossible to actually keep only the soil underneath one's home a consistent degree of wet. If you water the soil under your house, the water eventually gets sucked out by capillary action to all of the dry parts of your lawn (and your neighbors lawn).
It would only work if everyone watered EVERYWHERE, by a uniform amount.
They climb grasses to take advantage of the cooling effect of the breeze, search protection on numbers and jail itselves on a protective membrane to sleep during the hotter days.
Talk to the little green guy in the upper right corner, though he probably doesn't remember posing for a photo opp with that statue in Point Pleasant several years ago... www.molecularReality.com
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...