correct + coras/peckius

[Michael Gochfeld]

Since I just did a butterfly survey in the yard and found virtually 
nothing, I'll respond to Clay, perhaps just to be mischieveous. The 
notion that field biologists have to identify something to species, is 
not a divine requirement. It may be unique to butterfly and bird 
watche3rs.  Most entomologists and many botanists, I've been afield 
with, are content to get something to family (i.e. beetles) or genus 
(i.e. grasses), and recognize that somethings (i.e. Crateagus) don't 
behave properly at all. In the next message, I'll post the results of 
the Vischer Ferry (Albany, NY) 4JC, in which lamentably, a new 'species' 
was added, but not identifiable. 

In the grand scheme of things it will matter most to those who try to 
have spreadsheets that total neatly across rows and down columns (? dont 
get summed, although they do get counted). 

To read a really great account of this try C. Brooke Worth's chapter in 
A NATURALIST IN TRINIDAD, where he describes the compulsive behavior of 
his good friend Tommy Aitken who was responsible for mosquito sampling 
for ARBO viruses.  Each day the field techs would bring in dozens of 
samples containing dozens of individuals, and the lab techs would 
have to identify them and talley them.  When they were all identified, 
there would be a sort-of-spread sheet (a-la-1960s).  Brooke described 
how if there were one miscount (something didn't add up to the field 
totals), Tommy would order the techs to take out all the individuals and 
re-identify them, just so the books would add up right. 

Brooke proudly said that he would have been comfortable to just guess 
what the missing bug probably was  (surveyors call this error of 
closure). 

Anyway, we only have to identify bugs to species because we want to, not 
because we have to or because the bugs really believe in it. That goes 
for Peck's Skipper (which by the way should be out in numbers here now, 
but isn't). 

The sun is out, maybe there will be some butterflies in the yard besides 
Pieris rapae and Erynnis baptisae.  

MIKE GOCHFELD
Somerset, NJ

 
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