Field report/editorial

[Ron Gatrelle]

Made it out a bit today - saw one Phyciodes tharos. That's it, didn't find
anything else. I'll come back to my "field report" later, but first this.

    Why do we go out into the field? I hope it is not to just tramp habitat
and catch and kill and amass a mess of specimens for our butterfly/stamp
collection. (By the way I am a collector, you know.) I hope it is not to
just tramp habitat and watch and photograph and amass a mess of pictures
for our butterfly/stamp album. (By the way I am a watcher, you know.)
    Why do we rear species? To get a "perfect" series for the collection?
(By the way, I do rear perfect series.)  Because they are so cute to watch?
(By the way, I think they are cute.)
    Do I have a problem? Yes. It is not collecting or watching or rearing.
It is that tons of people seem engaged in these _activities_ without any
(or very little) interest in the science of it.
    I personally know of several people who have reared enormous amounts of
taxa and have never written one word about the life history of those taxa.
Don't they know how valuable this information would be if they had
documented it with scientific purpose?  Then there are those who make the
yearly tour of the hot collecting/watching spots. Butterfly bus tours.
Whether to catch in net or on film, they both just want to "get it" - check
off another taxon on the life list. These people just don't get it.

    Why did I go out today - or any day?  There are several reasons, but by
far the primary one is to gather scientific information. I think the reason
that I have "found" so many interesting new locations and unusual taxa over
the years is that my primary goal was not to just go-where get-what
everyone else already has.
    Let's speed this up and go back to today's outing and "field report".
    2000 was the coldest winter here since they have been keeping records.
We have had typical March days with some hitting 80 degrees. We had a very
unusual freeze last night and will have another tonight. This type of
weather is tough on Lepidoptera. So I went out today not to see what was
out - but to just SEE. There was nothing. It was sunny and probably almost
70. The one tharos I saw (I caught it for positive ID and let it go) was
quite active. There were not even any mosquitoes in the salt marsh or
swarming termites in the wood piles. THIS WAS A VERY PRODUCTIVE DAY!  TO A
PERSON TO WHOM INFORMATION IS AS IMPORTANT AS SPECIMENS OR PICTURES.  Oops,
I didn't mean to shout, sorry. I did mean to get preachy.
    This past cold winter makes this spring a very very important one
relative to Brephidium isophthalma insularus.  I am waiting to see the
first specimen. Why?  To make a conclusive determination to the resident
status of this new subspecies on the South Carolina coastal islands. To
gain this information, I have had to devote most of the few available days
I've had to get into the field NOT to collecting specimens I still consider
myself to "need" but to simply look and wait - I call this reseach. I guess
that makes me a researcher. To me,  collecting, watching, rearing etc. that
is devoid of a scientific eye is a basic waste of time.
    Solution. Become a researcher by making notes on those Black
Swallowtails you rear - document that unusual element of a habitat that
causes a taxon to be at one spot and not another.  Do this and you will
absolutely find something no one else has. At that point you will want to
publish it in an appropriate publication to the level of the discovery.
    Let, me put it this way. Did you ever stop to think how may thousands
of people for hundreds of years in the Monarch overwintering grounds in
Mexico never had any idea what was going on - and didn't care. Others might
have thought - Oh, aren't they pretty (= today's let's collected or
photograph one). But I will guarantee you that someone, some kid probably,
thought - Where do they go. By the time he was an old man, I bet this kid
could tell you a lot about the creatures and environment in which he lived.
He was a cave painter - a tribal historian - research scientist.
    My field report? Oh, I saw a whole lot today when I found only one
tharos. Very fruitful day.


 
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