BAMONA's blog

We are working to expand our image gallery by adding new photographs of early life stages: eggs, larvae (caterpillars), and pupae. You can help! If you have submitted a sighting of a caterpillar (or egg or pupa) and it has been accepted, we might consider adding your photograph to the image gallery and species page. Go to our "Share Photographs" page find out how to get your photograph in the image gallery.

We are most interested in photographs of species or instars not already documented in the gallery. Visit the gallery and view all the caterpillar images to see how you can help.

A recently published paper indicates that the Appalachian Tiger Swallowtail evolved from hybridization of two other types of swallowtails. Learn more.

Over 2,300 moth records from the Mississippi Entomological Museum were added to the database for species from families Limacodidae, Zygaenidae, and Megalopygidae.

Data collected as part of the Connecticut Butterfly Atlas Project (CBAP) have been added to the Butterflies and Moths of North America database. The CBAP dataset includes 13,246 new verified species occurrence records. Explore the CBAP dataset.

The Vermont Butterfly Survey data have been added to the Butterflies and Moths of North America database. This dataset contains 31,636 georeferenced records of butterfly species (and a few charismatic moth species). Thanks to Kent McFarland for spearheading the effort to prepare this dataset for addition to the database.

Explore the dataset, or go to the complete Vermont butterfly checklist.

Volunteer Citizen Scientists are being recruited for the Cascades Butterfly Project, a long-term effort in six locations in the Cascades Mountains to help biologists identify and count subalpine butterflies. Six protected areas in the Cascade Mountains are collaborating on this new monitoring program: North Cascades National Park, Mount Rainier National Park, Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Okanagan-Wenatchee National Forest, Skagit Valley Provincial Park, and Manning Provincial Park. Find out how to get involved.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) announced today that it is taking emergency action to protect the Miami blue butterfly. Upon publication of the emergency rule on August 10, 2011 in the Federal Register, the Miami blue becomes listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The emergency listing immediately protects the butterfly for 240 days. Concurrently, the Service is issuing a proposed rule to permanently put into place the protections for the Miami blue beyond the 240-day emergency period. Read the press release.

Butterflies and Moths of North America has been selected as one of the MARS Best Free Reference Web Sites of 2011.

BAMONA is one of 25 web sites to be recognized by MARS this year as an outstanding site for reference information. Other recipients include Google's Translator, WikiLeaks, The ICUN Red List of Threatened Species, and the Public Library of Science (PLOS). It is an honor to be in the company of these giants.

MARS is the "MARS: Emerging Technologies in Reference" section of the Reference and User Services Association of the American Library Association. See the full list of MARS Best of Free Reference Web Sites of 2011.

Thank you to all of our volunteer coordinators and submitters for your enduring support of this project.

Since our January 2011 launch of the new and improved Butterflies and Moths of North America site, more than 2,000 individuals have signed up accounts, and over 10,000 individual butterfly and moth sightings have been submitted to the project. Thanks to the tireless efforts of volunteer coordinators, more than 8,000 sightings have been verified and added to the database in these last four months. Thank you to all submitters, volunteers, and coordinators!

Did you know you can browse all the species in the BAMONA database? Find a list of all species on the Browse All Species page. Click a species name to go to its species profile.