Steven Whitebread

Joined: Feb 3, 2019 Last Active: Mar 28, 2024 iNaturalist

I have been studying moths for more than 50 years, in Europe and more recently in Massachusetts (and now back again in Europe). I co-initiated the Mass Moths project in 2015, primarily to put together a list of moths occurring in the State of Massachusetts, but it has developed into a full-blown project to centralize all known records from the State into a single curated database. This invaluable tool will help us to get a better idea of the status of each species.

We currently have 2,965 species on the Massachusetts list and we have 289,000 records in our database. We have prepared distribution maps for all species. Records have been gleaned from private and museum collections, literature, personal notebooks and online databases. iNaturalist records currently comprise around 32% of the total and represent 72% of the species occurring in Massachusetts. The MassMoths project is happy to receive any moth records from Massachusetts which are not supported by photos. We encourage moth fans to make a note of all species seen and identified, for instance at a porch light. It is simply not possible to photograph everything one sees and many valuable records would be lost if they are not noted 'the old-fashioned way' and submitted to Mass Moths (data (at) massmoths.org). Minimum required information: Species, locality (preferably with coordinates), date, observer and if not adult, state whether egg, larva or pupa.

Please have a look at our dedicated website: https://massmoths.org/

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