Having been preoccupied with other activities for much of the year, I am now getting around to entering my records, firstly into my own database and then then I'll transfer them into iRecord by spreadsheet upload. This is always an opportunity to review the quality of each of the records as I proceed.
My database flags various kinds of information as I make each entry: not just if a species is unusual for the area (in which case I will add a photo if I have one and carry across any information I wrote in my notebook about about how I came to the ID), but also it compares the record against the quoted flight periods in the field guides and against my own earliest/latest records.
While doing this, I came across a situation for which I'd like some guidance as I haven't managed to find anything in writing, but I'm sure it's not a unique situation:
If I find a dead adult moth, I haven't noticed an iRecord field designed for this. The "stage" field has various permitted values ("adult", "larva" and so on), but that list doesn't include anything that would cover a dead individual. So do I just add "dead" in the comments, or is there another way to record it or should it be omitted entirely?
Flight period information is important and I want to avoid the risk of making records that provide misleading data for this. Where a dead individual has just been found in a moth trap, one can be reasonably sure that it was alive recently (some caveats apply). But if found indoors or in certain other circumstances, the adult could have died weeks or months earlier.
I recall - and have re-found - guidance on how to record moths that were reared from early stages because emergence dates can be affected by the artificial rearing environment. However, I can't find similar guidance for recording dead individuals where there is a possibility that they have been dead for some time.
In the particular case that triggered this question, I have plenty of records of the living adults, so omitting a record of a couple of dead individuals would have no effect on distribution or abundance information, but there could be circumstances in which the discovery of a dead individual is of significance and making a proper record of it is important - but how?
Tim Arnold
Newton Longville, Bucks
Hello Tim,
ReplyDeletePlease do record these finds and let your county recorder make the decision what to do with them. I doubt that they'll happen very often so they're not going to skew things too much but, as you say, it is very important that you add the explanatory details as a brief comment ("found deceased in trap", "found dead in spider's web" or whatever).
You briefly mentioned moths that have been reared from earlier stages. Just in case anyone else is still wondering about the correct procedure, it is important that these are recorded with the date of the initial find as an egg, larva or pupa (with that given as the life stage) and then a comment added to say something like "reared indoors, adult emerged 9Jan2024" or whatever.
Cheers, Dave
Hi Tim, if you are entering records direct into iRecord there is an option to put "dead" as the stage term, and I would recommend doing that, adding any further info into the comment field if needed. However, this seems to be missing from the set of terms that the spreadsheet import allows, so I will see if it can be added. If you need to do an import straight away then I'd recommend using "Other" as the stage, and adding a comment.
ReplyDeleteThanks to both Dave and Martin.
ReplyDeleteI will set the stage to "Other" and add an appropriate comment. I have few records of dead moths anyhow, and (so far) only one record where the moth could have been dead for more than a matter of hours.
I'm not ready to upload to iRecord yet: it is taking quite a long while to work through my 2023 records (and in any case, I have some gen. dets. to come). If the spreadsheet import doesn't take "Dead" by the time I'm ready to upload, it will be minimal work to weed out those few records from the spreadsheet and to enter them manually.