Hi All,
From October 21-29, I was visiting my parents, my sisters and their families, and website members in New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
On the trip down, as I turned off I 95 in southern Maine to head west to Strafford, New Hamsphire, the fall foliage was beautiful.
In N.H., I was pleased to meet Bonnie J. Caruthers and the critters in her care, especially Luna, a green chameleon, and an African clawed frog. Bonnie showed me some large luna cocoons she had reared on sumac this past summer and we worked a trade.
In Albany, New York, I stayed with Robert and Bev Powers. Bev is working on developing caterpillar jewellry pins and is off to a good start. She's looking for high quality, high resolution jpg images of Pyrrharctia isabellae, preferably dorsal views. If you have them, please send them along and I will make prints for her to put on the pins.
Robert is an accomplished flier of remote controlled aircraft and we spent a beautiful afternoon on one of the hilltops in Clarksville watching Robert put his plane through a series of runs with four point rolls, loops, etc. Bev was able to find a number of woolly bear larvae on the private Pannay Reels runway, but lacks a good camera for pictures.
My parents are in good health and were quite anxious to have me open a large envelope as soon as I arrived. Mom had sent Taylor Jones some pictures of me at my son's wedding last July. Taylor used the pics to do a caricature. Now I'm really famous! See the picture at caricature
I boxed up and mailed out over seventy cocoon/pupae/chrysalis orders as well as the NA Saturniidae cd's and the WLSS cd's.
I am now sold out of cecropia and columbia, but the following species are still available (only in U.S.): Actias luna, Automeris io, Callosamia promethea, Samia cynthia, Sphingidae Amphion floridensis and Sphecodina abbottii and butterflies Papilio glaucus and Papilio troilus all at $4.00, big Antheraea polyphemus at $4.50 and Darapsa choerilus at $3.00. There is one $7.00 shipping and handling fee. The remaining items are purchased stock so there is no discount for members. Member discounts will again go into effect in spring (egg orders) and fall (cocoon orders) of 2005.
As of November 6, all the Sphingidae are now spoken for.
Many thanks to Bonnie Caruthers, Bev Powers, David Albaugh, Jim Anderson, Alan Vosefski, Cindy Mark, Bob Muller and my father who provided cocoons/pupae/chrysalids to help me fill orders. All provided some very nice stock to go with the items I had preshipped to the states.
I was able to see three of my four sisters in New Jersey and once again demonstrated my skills at the pinochle table at my parent's home. Dad was skunked this time, but took the losses well! Mom's cooking is still second to none!
On the way home, I had a nice visit with my youngest sister and her family in southern Massachusetts. Hope to work in more time next trip to meet David Albaugh in Rhode Island and Don Adams in Massachusetts and perhaps some other members along the way.
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On November 16, I received mail from new member Hubert Mayer from Austria. He has a large (1500 slides) collection of Saturniidae and Sphingidae and is going to begin scans and image submissions soon. Copiopteryx andensis is one of the images he will be sending, and he has also indicated he has Euryglottis davidianus and Manduca mossi for Sphingidae sections. Hope to get quite a few new additions from his collection.
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On November 15, I received beautiful images (uploaded) of very rare Almeidaia aidae male and female (Brazil) from Eurides Furtado. Larval images and info to come shortly. (now up)
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On November 13, I received this email from Russell Witkop:
I would like a A1 specimen or stock of tiger moth Amphicalia bellitrix from Africa, any African Saturnidae stock. Have good stock and rarities to trade.
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On November 5, I received this email from Robert Minetti:
Dear Sir,
I'm just turn back from a trip in Tanzania where I have collected many Saturnidae. I will prepare a list of these species. I particulary have the chance to found the rarissime mythical (unfound from his description many year before), Eosia insignis.
I have one female to sell. So if you know some serious people that could be interested; please could you inform them. I wait for serious price offer for this specimens.
Thank for your help.
Sincerely,
Robert Minetti at CiotEnto@aol.com
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Mario Ioppolo regularly offers Samia ricini: Price will be 10 Euros/12.50 USD for 30 eggs + 1 Euro for shipping.
Mario has these on a regular basis so do not hesitate to contact him
Mario Ioppolo
va Carnazza 89 pal. 4
95030 Tremestieri Etneo (CT)
Italy
Email: mario@ecosicilia.net
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from Shin-ichi Ohshima, Japan
"WANT TO TRADE" I have some winter pupae (hatch in next March-April) of Brahmaea japonica for trade. Also, I have winter eggs of Caligula jonasii and Rhodinia fugax. I am looking for good Saturniidae (1A mounterd specimen or 1A ex pupae papered) from World. Shin-ichi Ohshima, Japan o_shima@nifty.com
Papered specimens of Actias gnoma gnoma (papered 1A ex pupae) are also being offered.
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Beautiful images have come in from Jose Boettger, Alan Marson, Robert Thompson, Bernhard Wenczel, Viktor Suter, David Wikle, Andreas Riekert and Bedros Orchanian. Check them out in the photography section and individual files.
Hope to shortly post more images from Thibaud Decaens and Kirby Wolfe and to get caught up on some images from David Albaugh (now done -- especially beautiful atlas larva and imperialis female), sent much earlier.
Kirby Wolfe's new images of Epiphora bauhiniae, Actias isis, Anisota leucostygma, Antheraea frithi and Pseudodirphia mexicana are now up in the photography section.
Thibaud Decaen's new images of Copaxa multifenestrata, Copaxa rufa, Eupackardia calleta, Pseudodirphia eumedidoides, and Samia canningi are now up.
Bernhard Wenczel sent me a cd with another group of beautiful images, some by Bernhard, some by Viktor Suter. I have started to upload them to the photography section and to respective individual species files: Syssphinx pescadori, S. molina, S. raspa, Rothschildia arethusa rhodina, R. aricia, R. aurota aurota, R. aurota spculifera, R. cincta guerreronis, etc., Ptiloscola rorerae, etc., etc., Wow!
I will shortly be launching the Bernhard Wenczel/Viktor Suter collection as soon as some new species get published.
I am also correcting taxonomies and spelling as I go through the various files. Syssphinx now done!
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Have a look at David Wikle's stunning image of Agapema anona.
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Occasionally you will notice missing images. If they are credited to Claude Lemaire, it is because they reside on my home computer for future reference, but could not be posted to website. If they are missing and credited to another photographer, please advise.
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I have been updating the Attacus files, based on Peigler's revision. Almost done; earlier, I had used his revision of Samia to update that genus. Dr. Peigler is very thorough in his research and his publications are of exceptional quality. Kirby Wolfe recently directed me to this page: http://www.uiw.edu/biology/book.html
Kirby had written, "My good friend, Ric Peigler, has just alerted me to his new site advertizing his great book on Samia. It has a gold mine of bibliography, as do all of his publications. I thought you would be interested in possibly putting a link to the site on your Saturniidae site."
I (Bill Oehlke) would certainly recommend any of Ric Peigler's books.
Of Attacus suparmani, Dr. Peigler writes, November 10, 2004, " I consider suparmani to be an obvious synonym of intermedius, which was implied when I cited the number of known Attacus species as 14 in the Samia revision.
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Andreas Riekert has been especially helpful with some of the rarer Attacus, Archaeoattacus and Coscinocera images. Many thanks to all who have been sending images and information.
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I have added the following recently described species to genus checklists and hope to soon have images and information:
Automeris haxairei Herbin, 2003, Bolivia;
Cerodirphia barbuti Rougerie & Herbin, 2004, Peru;
Dirphiopsis herbini Wolfe, 2003, Bolivia;
Hylesia daryae Decaëns, Bonilla & Wolfe, 2003, Colombia;
Loepa meyi Naumann, 2003, Shaanxi, China;
Loepa tibeta Naumann, 2003, Tibet, China;
Saturnia (Rinaca) nanlingensis Brechlin, 2004, China;
Saturnia (Rinaca) sinjaevi Brechlin, 2004, China.
Help with images and info would be appreciated.
I have also created a page listing most of the new taxa described since 1985. It is linked from New Taxa in the specialty area.
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I have posted a highly Technical Report on Insect Pheromone Receptors by Dr. Karl-Ernst Kaissling. The report is in pdf format. It can be accessed from the Members's Articles Section.
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In January I hope to begin checklists for each of the states in Mexico. I find these checklists very useful in determining ids when images of moths or larvae are sent to me for identification.
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Thanks to Tom Binter for sending me some corrections to Czech Republic checklist.
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2004 Photography Contest:
Last year I selected ten finalists for the 2003 photography contest and posted the list and images for a member vote. I will probably do something similar this year, but I may ask the finalists to select the image of their choice for the contest as there are so many excellent pictures.
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Please check the Members' Wishlist periodically and help when you can.
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Sphingidae Express
Tim Dyson has some Manduca pupae.
There are also some Amphion floridensis, Sphecodina abbottii and Darapsa choerius pupae still available (all gone now). This year's Eumorpha pandorus pupae were monsters and sold out very quickly (only had 23).
Paul Johnson, just sent notice of Arctonutus lucidus early flight on west coast.
"Just a couple weeks ago, Dan Rubinoff emailed me from Hawaii asking if I thought Arctonotus lucidus would be flying early this year after the early rains we've had. As usual, Dan's thoughts on California Sphingids are right on target: I saw one on Saturday, 13 Nov at 0300. As far as I can tell, that's 10 days earlier than the early record set in 2002. Another was reported to me flying around in a friend's house the following evening. Has anyone else seen them?"
"Here's the data:"
13 Nov 2004, 0300
Ca: San Benito Co.
Pinnacles National Monument
Bear Gulch Headquarters
Paul G. Johnson II
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Catocala Capers
I managed to take a very late female C. relicta and plan to rear them again next season along with C. concumbens and C. coelebs (very few eggs).
Beautiful image of Catocala cerogama has recently come in from Jean-Benoît Duval of Quebec and has been uploaded to the cerogama page.
Tim Dyson has begun to send me a great many more Noctuidae images and I will soon upload them to his site.
Tom Murray has just provided me with some nice Catocala shots: amatrix, antinympha, epione, gracilis, retecta.
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Wayne Whaley is looking for a specimen or parts of a specimen for DNA research on Bombyx mori.
Dr. Wayne H. Whaley
Professor
Department of Biology
Utah Valley State College
Orem, UT 84058
Office (801) 863-8607
Dept. (801) 863-8616
Fax (801) 863-8064
e-mail: whaleywa@uvsc.edu
I believe several members have already responded. Thanks!
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