Recording Dead Moths - further comment

 Dear All

In response to the discussion below on this topic, as VC23 CMR I would like to add two comments. 

Firstly, I agree with what Dave says about reared records. For the purposes of recording, it is essential that only the date of capture of the egg, larva, mine, adult parent female etc. is recorded in the Date field. Anything else that might be felt to be interesting/relevant belongs in the Comment field. 

Records of moths found dead are usually of relatively little value especially if they are common species recorded regularly at the site. For more worthwhile things, if there is any doubt as to the period in which the moth was alive, the best policy imo is to give the full year range (e.g. 01/01/2023-31/12/2023) in the Date field and an explanation of the find given in the Comment field. 

There are exceptions of course - if a moth has been killed by a predator (inside or outside the trap) common sense will tell you whether it was part of that night's catch. For example, I counted the Mottled Umber found a few weeks ago having been caught and wrapped up in silk by a False Widow Spider on the nearby fence, because when extracted from the web it was found to be still floppy. 

Even if a moth is found inside (or near) a trap, if it is dessicated it clearly did not arrive on that date. Moths are easily overlooked when releasing catches and something dried up should not be included with the list from that date when it was first noticed. 

It took BC staff a lot of work removing records with spurious dates from NMRS, including dead specimens, so that the phenology charts in the atlas made sense. Records with whole range ranges are exluded prior to phenology analysis. The phenology data is arguably the most important aspect of recording these days, so its quite important that we get this right. 

Best wishes

Martin