65 species
in the garden trap despite heavy rain overnight. Highlights pretty limited, e.g.
Zelleria hepariella 1,
Prays fraxinella f. rustica 3, Diamond-back Moth 1, White-spotted Pug 1,
August Thorn 2, Copper Underwing 1 & Silver Y 18. Sam Bosanquet’s comments
on the Carms moth blog made me aware of the potential split between the two
colour-forms of Ash Bud Moth Prays
fraxinella, i,e, the dark one may be P.
ruficeps. Unfortunately I have not been systematic in noting the two
different colour-forms (unlike Jake and Dave S. by the look of things), but suggest that we
all start doing so now. It appears that the dark form/species may be migratory. I notice on MapMate there are quite a number of records of the binomial with 'dark form' given in the
Barry - you might have noticed I've put 'dark form' in the comments box for mine, I wasn't sure if the taxanomic status of this form/species had been resolved. Dave - should I change these to f. rustica in MapMate as Barry suggests?
ReplyDeleteI have 8 garden records for Prays fraxinella all but one of which have been 'f. rustica'. I had one of these on 30th July.
George (Llandaff North)
My understanding of the situation is that there is a dark form of Prays fraxinella (f. rustica) as well as the other species which only has a dark form - Prays ruficeps.
ReplyDeleteSo recording the dark form would not help split up the records in the future, hence it make no real difference how you do it. In fact the problem with entering all records with f. rustica as the taxon may cause more problems if MapMate decide to replace that taxon with the new species, which is not necessarily correct! I suggest using the comments field.
Ok thanks Dave, I'll leave my records as they are in that case.
ReplyDeleteGeorge