Oklahoma BioBlitz Moth Results

This year the Oklahoma BioBlitz was held at Sequoyah State Park on October 4-6. We had record attendance of 458 people, so the activities were packed with participants. It is a lot of fun to be surrounded by so many nature enthusiasts. Activities include bird, herp, plant, fossil, or general discovery walks, nature crafts, setting and checking mammal traps, mist netting and banding of birds and bats, and others. A lot of the activities are kid friendly, but there is something for everyone.

There are "taxa leaders" and "taxa experts" that help identify different living things that have been photographed or collected. This year I helped collect the Lepidoptera species list and turned that over to the terrestrial invertebrates leader to compile.

I set up lights on the night of Friday, October 4 to attract moths and other nocturnal insects. In addition to my two light setups, Ken Hobson, Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Oklahoma, also had a sheet setup with florescent blacklight bulbs.

I monitored the lights until about midnight, which is my usual schedule, and then went to bed. I got up around 3:45 and checked the lights again and found a few additional species. In all, it was kind of slow for moths and other insects, but during the 24 hour inventory period for the BioBlitz we did turn up more than 50 species of moths and 15-20 species of butterflies. Since then I've seen some additional species reported through iNaturalist that I wasn't aware of at the time we collected the species tally.

At the conclusion of the species tally there were 879 species of life observed in Sequoyah State Park, which is pretty good. According to coordinator Priscilla Crawford, when BioBlitz was scheduled during the month of September they would regularly eclipse 1000 species, but this was a pretty good tally.

Next year's BioBlitz will be held on October 2-4, 2020 at Roman Nose State Park. See you there!
Details should be added here as we get closer to the date.

Posted on October 8, 2019 05:08 PM by zdufran zdufran

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