Collecting in Florida

[Joseph G. Kunkel]

This discussion:
Chuck Vaughn wrote:
> Neil Jones wrote:
> > > It seems they think catching butterflies is the same as shooting vertebrate
> > > animals?
> > Why the distinction? ...
> 
> I hope your not going to try to tell me that catching a butterfly and putting
> it in a case is the same thing as shooting a lion and hanging it's head on your
> wall. ...

Reminds me of an appocraphal story told about a young idealistic
assistant professor who taught here at UMass Amherst before I got here
in 1970. The story goes:
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A certain young professor gained reknown for one particular lecture he
would give in Botany 100 every year.  Secretaries and upper-classmen
would attend this lecture to relive it each year.
The lecture began with the lecturer taking out a daisy and ripping off
its petals, one by one.  There would be a tittering in the audience as
this ceremony continued to its end with a petalless daisy.
Next he took out of a bag a peeping chick and rung his neck to the cries
and gasps of the audience.
The rhetorical question ensued, "Why did you not cry in protest for the
plant?"

PS: That professor as popular as he was in his quest for respect for all
plants did not get tenure, so it is said, because he did not balance his
popular teaching with professional research.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

The current discussions surrounding the Florida Collecting Experiences
are disturbing in that they are bordering on being devisive in the group
of leps-listers.  We all share a love or at least interest in
lepidoptera.  As a childhood collector of insects in general I
occasionally had twinges of sorrow when I would kill a Giant Silk Moth
which I had raised lovingly for just that purpose: killing it and
mounting it on the wall like the head of Chuck Vaughn's lion.  I am sure
that Teddy Roosevelt, in an earlier era, had similar feelings of pride
and admiration about his vertebrate trophies which many uf us have
admired at his Sagamoor Hills mansion.  But times and attitudes change;
what was acceptable in my youth as a hobby may not be encouraged in the
younger generation.  I was not encouraged but I was not discouraged.  We
need to foster any interest in Leps and previously collecting and
rearing immature leps seemed to me to be a normal, laudable interest. 
We need to allow it when it does not harm an endangered species.  Horror
at depetalling a common daisy is a laughable extreme (I hope no
flower-people are listening).  Current K-12 emphasis is on observing
nature.  Unfortunately, for undestanding of life and its ultimate
conservation some animals and plants must be killed during research. 
How do we raise a generation of scientists and naturalist who will have
the correct balance of respect for life but curiosity about mechanisms
(that require killing to observe)?

Professionally I have slaughtered thousands (more like millions) of
cockroaches in the pursuit of understanding insect development (my
passion). This was no endeavor to save the world from a pest. It was an
extension of my childhood fascination.  It was my intellectual curiosity
and cockroaches were a convenient lab animal.  I also spent summers on a
dairy farm learning to shed by maukish sentimentality about killing
those cute racoons which were decimating our corn crop.  How can be
encourage our youth to investigate and appreciate the great biological
questions that remain?

Recently I have returned to studying Leps.  I have run light traps that
attract moths by the thousands and I have spent evenings mounting my
catch and further studying the evolution of the venation of noctuids in
particular.  Perhaps I have killed an endangered moth here and there
(unknowingly and possibly inadvertantly).  I have this ongoing interest
in collecting noctuids.  Is it essential research?  Is it more important
than a longtime hobbyist's fascination with the group?  Are our
northeastern noctuids less deserving of conservation than the average
Floridian butterfly?  

Last summer I attended the 50th Anniversary Lep Soc meeting and had my
consciousness raised about Lep conservation.  Overall I think it is a
good thing.  I have innaugurated a thrice weekly Lep Walk of my own
during which I census the butterflies on a 3/4 hour transect and
photograph them rather than catch them.  However when I convince myself
that a population of a species is high enough locally I will have no
conpunction against catching some specimens for wall decoration and
appreciation by my family and friends who will listen to my babble.  I
also would like to grow some from eggs, as I did as a youth, to watch
the marvelous metamorphosis that drew me into biology in the first
place.  Clearly at this time in history, that behavior is still possible
and legal here in western Massachusetts.  We have an endangered species
list but our concentration is on protecting the environment rather than
the species that cling to life in those environments.

For the time being, I have cancelled any thoughts of collecting, or even
observing, leps in Florida.  Are the Floridian Leps better off for my
absence?

Cheers to all.
-- 
______________________________
Joe Kunkel, Professor
Biology Department, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
joe at bio.umass.edu  http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/kunkel/