It Has Been Four Months Since the last update and many photographs have been added to the Living Moths Plates Series. The plates now hold over 1,800 species represented by more than 5,000 of your photos.


Moving the website to the Mississippi Entomological Museum at Mississippi State University was accomplished without difficulty. Over the next year the size of living moth plates will be reduced, with most of the content appearing on individual species pages. Link buttons will permit you to easily move back and forth between species pages, pinned specimen plates and living moth plates. As this work is accomplished for groups of plates, the background of the plate listing is changed to pink. This work was recently completed for Pyralidae and work on Catocalinae is underway.

A special note of thanks to Richard L. Brown, Director of MEM, for facilitating this move.

Filling In The Blanks:  Via Paris France, Pierre Zagatti has given MPG permission to use photographs from his website Catalogue of the Lepidoptera of the French Antilles. This permits us to fill in some missing species and also to upgrade spread specimen photos for a number of species that reach the southern limits of the United States.

The Jim Vargo Collection:  In recent months we have added 14 plates for micromoths. These contain photos of about 1,000 species, including more than 600 species in Pyralidae-Crambidae. This is the first really major effort at online coverage of the Pyralidae and a marvelous gift to MPG from Jim. See Plate 27.1 for an example Pyralid Plate.

Currently arriving are many photos to enhance our collection of Tortricidae. This portion of Jim's collection is being validated by Michael Sabourin. Ultimately we expect photos of about 5,000 species from Jim's collection. These will appear as small left-side photos on pinned specimen plates, and as full width photos on species pages and on a separate series of plates for the complete Vargo Collection.

Welcome New Contributors: Tom Bentley (IL), James Blanchard (TX), Erik Blosser (VA), Karen Brooks (GA), Kevin Brown (AR), Will Chatfield-Taylor (CA), Rob Curtis (IL), Brian Denmee (UK), Jim Escoffier (FL), Chris French (VA), Tony Gallucci (TX), Larry Gooding (OR), Robert Grosek (NY), Klaus Jones (VA), Russ Jones (ON), Sean McCann (FL), Beatriz Moisset (PA), Bob Moul (PA), Tom Peterson (IL), Craig Reed (GA), Arlene Ripley (MD), Richard Rogers (WA), Lois Stacey (SC), David Terwilliger (CA), Kelly Young (WI), Pierre Zagatti (Fr)

Got the Mothing Bug?  Add your photographs to the collaborative effort here at Moth Photographers Group and help build the photobase that helps everyone interested in moth identification. Are You a Moth Specialist? Add an entry in your CV by refereeing a family or subfamily here, and help build the accuracy of the photo library.

Your Unidentified Moths: Send them in. Any number, 1 to 100 or more, just pick the best photo of each species that you can't identify. Once a photo has been identified it will move to the live moth archives where it can help others to identify their moths. See the Submit a Photo page.