Extinction of Mitchell's Satyr by collectors

[Michael Gochfeld]

As usualy, John has brought great clarity to an historically murky 
situation (even when purporting to "confuse the issue 
further").  I've gotten leads on collectors who were in the field with 
the purported "terminator" and will see if I can add some additional 
information (if only more circumstantial), by way of documenting the 
demise of the species.  The last known NJ site, the "Johnsonburg Bog" 
(technically a fen), was visited by a number of collectors and butterfly 
watchers during the mid and late 80's.  After a number of unsuccessful 
attempts to find the species at this last known locality, it was 
presumed "extirpated".  We'll see what I can learn about subsequent 
attempts to track it down. 

A disturbing feature of John's posting is that both the New Jersey and 
North Carolina collectors, deliberately misrepresented collecting 
information (sites? dates?) which certainly undermines the scientific 
value of collecting.  Unscrupulous collectors are not unique to 
butterflies. The history of bird collecting has some choice stories 
about labels falsified to encourage a patron to pay a higher price (I 
recall mentioning this on the list a year or so ago).
Gene Eisenmann, Neotropical bird expert of the AMNH, pointed out that 
many of the Olalla specimens from Brazil were deliberately mislabelled 
(they would collect on one side of a river and then label part of their 
catch as coming from the other side of the river, thereby vitiating 
studies of whether wide Amazonian basin rivers formed species 
boundaries. 

I think it important to remind people that whether collecting is "good" 
or "bad" or whether collectors are "good" or "bad", or how many of the 
latter there may be in our midst, are separate questions from "whether 
or not a species or a population CAN be collected out of existence. A 
species with high fecundity, high vagility, broad habitat tolerance, and 
large initial populations sizes is not a model for a relict species with 
small populations, low fecundity, restricted range, and short flight 
period.  Despite time-honored beliefs, it would have been relatively 
easy with multiple visits each year over a period of a few years, to 
eliminate the Satyr species (or at least reduce it to a low level where 
random events led to its extinction). 

M. Gochfeld