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Index of Subjects Hi, Steve- Yes, MONA would be a huge investment, and in fact might not be a very good one, if you were mainly interested in assigning a name to a photo or specimen. This is a huge project and is far from complete, even though it has been going on since the early '70s. Furthermore, although it has wonderful photos, they aren't necessarily helpful in making an identification, due to the problems of individual variation within a species and similarities between species. Like all science, the taxonomy of moths is in constant flux and you will find the same organism named differently depending upon the age of the reference you use. Likewise the higher-level organization (families, etc.) changes with time. To identify a moth, I usually go to a whole bunch of references including field guides, Holland's ancient moth book, Ferguson's "Lepidoptera of Nova Scotia" and of course the web. It's important to get some idea of the range, habitat and food plants for the species, since for example something which feeds on Yucca could pretty much be ruled out for Nova Scotia. If you're lucky, the moth you're trying to ID won't look much like any other species, and you will be happy with the ID. Other times, the one you are trying to find will look like several different species or none! If you are really serious about naming a specimen, the Nova Scotia Museum has a good collection of local moths and it may be possible to get some help from them, although no doubt this would be dependent upon whether they have the resources to deal with this sort of request. As for the ring of ferns, sorry but I haven't a clue. Peter On 2013-06-29 7:11 PM, Steve Shaw wrote: > Thanks, Peter, interesting. It would be quite an investment even to > own all of the 28 volumes of moth families advertised so far in the > site that you indicated (of the ~130 expected), that presumably > underpin the Checklist or part of it. For a modest $20, the > Checklist is presumably just that, a list of proper binomial names > without illustrations. This raises the question of how you are > supposed to go from finding, say, an unidentified local green geometer > to putting a Hodges name on it. BugGuide? It is a quite different > matter doing this for the estimated 16,000+ moths than for local > butterflies, where your excellent, updated Butterflies site gives > images of all 70-odd species that have occurred in NS, making > identification much easier. Bev's site is a great starting point for > the moths, but I think it is fairly recent.
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