Butterflies and Moths of Yavapai County, Arizona

Posted on April 13, 2017 by GarryRogers

My Butterfly and Moth Checklist, Yavapai County, Arizona is complete. The book includes species lists from the Butterflies and Moths of North America (BAMONA) website with minor adjustments from the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AZGFD). Conservation ranks are from the AZGFD website. All the species names link to photos and descriptions on the BAMONA website.

Yavapai County covers a large, diverse region in central Arizona. It includes mountains with mixed coniferous forests, foothills with evergreen woodlands and shrublands, and wide valleys with desert grasslands. My place is on the edge of a small riparian forest beside the Agua Fria River in Lonesome Valley. The site is home to many butterflies, moths, and other wildlife. The discussion and photographs in the book focus on this area.

The book has only 30 pages. I might have it printed for my use, but I don’t expect to offer it for sale. Since it has color pictures, it will be expensive to print (around $12). The PDF version of the book is free. Look the PDF over and let me know if you want a printed copy. If there are several requests, I’ll have it formatted and printed.

The PDF has some advantages over a print copy. It has fillable fields and links to species descriptions and photographs. Used on a tablet, it will serve as a notebook and reference for field use.

Specialists reviewed the species lists, but I proofed the introduction myself, never a good idea, so there might be an error or two. Please add a comment or send an email if you find a mistake (thank you!).

Inventory of Moths

Posted on March 15, 2016 by GarryRogers

Biodiversity in the Andes: Teaming up international colleagues, an entomologist of Jena University identifies nearly 2,000 geometrid moth species in the South-American Andes The rain forests in the mountains of the tropical Andes are amongst the… From: www.innovations-report.com

GR: Yes! We need more work like this. And we need repeated surveys to show when species are having trouble.
Biologists estimate that only about 10% of all moth species have been identified. Nighttime pollinators as sensitive to pesticides as their daytime counterparts, the butterflies, these innocent creatures could be going extinct faster than we are finding them. We, the only species capable of caring for the others, might never know how many moths there were before the current mass extinction.

Arizona Wildlife Notebook Second Edition

Posted on January 29, 2014 by GarryRogers

Arizona Wildlife Notebook Introduction

Base Layer for Notebook Cover

The second edition of my “Arizona Wildlife Notebook” will be off to the printer (CreateSpace) as soon as I finish the cover. This edition has introductions and checklists for 12 groups of Arizona animal species: Amphibians, ants, bats, birds, butterflies and moths, dragonflies and damselflies, fish, grasshoppers, lizards, mammals, snakes, and turtles. Groups in bold type are new to the Notebook. The introduction to each group covers the group’s conservation issues and provides references for printed and online field guides. The checklist for each group includes scientific and common names and conservation status. I alphabetized each checklist by scientific name, and I included an index for all the common names. Continue reading →

New Arizona Wildlife Notebook

Posted on December 6, 2013 by GarryRogers

Arizona Wildlife Notebook, Second edition

I have completed the second edition of the Arizona Wildlife Notebook! The new Notebook has four more species groups than the first edition, and it has an expanded index. The most important change is in the conservation status for each species. This time, I standardized the information so that future changes will be easier to track. Continue reading →

Arizona Butterfly and Moth Update–November, 2013

Posted on November 14, 2013 by GarryRogers

By Garry Rogers

Arizona Butterfly and Moth Conservation

Two-tailed Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio multicaudata) Arizona’s butterfly.

Butterflies and moths are pollinators and they are food for other species. I know of no harm they cause to human interests. Nevertheless, many die from insecticide poisoning and others decline due to human removal of caterpillar host plants. The conservation status of these familiar animals is mostly unknown.

Butterflies and moths are not thought of as social insects, but they do interact beyond their feeding and mating behavior. I have watched two Monarch butterflies perched side by side patiently taking turns at a nectar source, and many of us have seen two or more individuals swirling around with members of their own and other species. Continue reading →

Butterflies and Moths of Arizona Conservation Status

Posted on August 19, 2013 by GarryRogers

Arizona Butterfly and Moth Conservation Checklist

Click here for an earlier post with a more detailed discussion.

Butterflies, just like honey bees and other pollinators, are declining because of habitat loss and because of pesticides. Even herbicides can be deadly. Monarch butterflies for instance, do not lay many eggs if there aren’t any milkweeds, and people routinely eradicate milkweeds along with other plants.

According to the Arizona Game and Fish Department, the conservation status of most butterflies is unknown. Our knowledge of moths is even less complete. Most moth species have not been identified, and there is almost no information on the conservation status of Arizona moths. The number given below for butterflies at risk of extinction is almost certainly lower than the actual number.

Butterfly and Moth Photographs

Here are a few sample photographs of butterflies and moths seen around my home in Dewey-Humboldt on the Agua Fria River in central Arizona. If there was a common designation of knowledge below “amateur,” it would describe my expertise with the Lepodoptera. Thus, I could not identify some of the photographed species with confidence. This is especially true for moths.