You just got to get up close and personal.

I've read about this, also that females have bigger abdomens due to eggs, but I personally can't see the difference (too slight?) except with the big silk moths - female silk moths have enormous abdomens.
I tried to see the claspers on male giant swallowtails - I had read a lot about theirs - several years ago and never could. Maybe it's because they only extend them when they're mating? I've only seen giant swallowtails mating a few times, and when I tried to approach them, they'd fly off. I tell the difference in giants by the size of their horizontal bars now.
Anyway, I'm sure it's all true, but like Sandy, said, "You just got to get up close and personal."
Sherry

Just because of the overall size of the Papilioniidae in NA they are the easiest ones in NA to see the claspers on (and to hand pair), but they can be seen on many smaller species as well if you get the right angle, the right background and close enough. They do not "extend" their claspers for mating as per se, just use them to grasp the females abdomen. You all know what gets extended. As I said, a gravid females abdomen swollen with eggs is pretty easy to see (in almost any species), but with practice so is the bluntness of the tip of her abdomen when she is not carrying eggs, or is a species that only produces very few eggs. Really just comes down to field experience after obsevering (and confirming) many that you'll just know. IOW, might take putting a net on them to confirm for a while. The behavior of the individual will often also point to which sex it is, where or how it flies, what it is doing, it's demeanor, etc. So between what you think you see in the abdomen and what you see in behavior, you will be right almost all of the time what sex it is.
Honest Injun...
Larry

Maybe these pictures will help on the abdomen differences. Dried specimens are not the best choice to show living profiles I know, but. In the smaller version of the picture you can see the overall profile of a male verses female abdomen pretty good.

Click the link below for a full size version of this picture to really see the detail of the claspers, etc.

{{gwi:460537}}

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:460534}}

You can also ID female/male during the pupal stage. I've put information about this on my two websites for certain butterflies.

Here is a link that might be useful: tdogmom's butterfly guide

Larry, those photos help. I will definitely be getting up close and personal this summer to check them out. I thought this site had nice photos too of a boy and girl.

http://www.berkeleyswallowtails.com/boygirl.shtml

Cheers,
Elisabeth

The fly in the soup though is... "if you get the right angle, the right background and close enough". LOL IOW, the leps have a strong habit of not perching, nectaring, etc with their abdomens fully exposed and easy to inspect. But in time, even a glance will be enough when coupled with your gut feeling based on their behavior to determine their sex. Some can be determined with a fairly high degree of success even when on the wing.

Kind of reminds me of the later hippie (yippie) era when with many of them you almost had to see them naked to tell the boys from the girls. LOL

Larry aka "ladobe",

I tried sending an email but haven't heard from you. I noticed this very recent thread and thought I would give a shot at contacting you re: H. electra larvae. Contact me, please...

Cheers,
Terry terrysears@cox.net

Terry,

Never got any email from you. The email thing here has never worked worth squat, probably because this addy is on a server with a strict firewall. I just changed my forum addy to a more tolerant addy on one of my other servers if you want to try again.

I haven't had much time for the computer all week due to packing, and it goes off-line later tonight as I'm moving to The Elephant Bone Yard tomorrow. Not sure when I'll be back on-line and have time for it, but hopefully only a couple of days. Sorry, but your questions will have to wait until then. In the meantime feel free to try my email through the forum again and include your questions if you want to. That way I can try to answer them as soon as I'm back on-line.

I put all of the 1990's (six of those years very seriously) into studying the life history, discovering many new colonies and rearing hundreds of this bug. Not my favorite Hemileciinae, but it's a fun and beautiful one.

Larry

Larry,

OK, I am stumped. I have been trying the email system and the server is blitzing and I have been trying to track you down through the Lep Soc, Mike Collins, Paul Tuskes, etc. I give up!

Here's the deal: I will be in St. George next week and wanted to check for H. electra larvae per Mike's suggestion. All the Eriogonum faciculatum for the state is in Washington County, so the plant geography is amenable to the search. Given your extensive work with the moth and your descriptions of their narrowly defined colonies, I was hoping that you had some "sage" advice on how to find the best buckwheat for the buck. (For those of you who may miss the pun, Eriogonum = buckwheat.)

If you have no objection, I would love to talk with you--or at least email to one another outside this server. My email address is posted above.

Thanks,
Terry

Terry,

Mike, Paul, Steve, in fact almost none of the folks from the Lep Soc or the ULS have been able to contact me for years. I dropped my membership to ULS in the early 90's and to the Lep Soc in the late 90's. My extensive work with the isolated species of the Spring Mountains since then remains unreported and unpublished.

"I was hoping that you had some "sage" advice on how to find the best buckwheat for the buck."

IOW, what are the locations of the colonies you found. Sorry, not meant as any reflection on you but I don't know you and that's info I don't share to protect them from being wiped out like at the disclosed Shivwits site.

You could try the Shivwits site, if you can find it, but I don't know if its even still viable after the years of over collecting. That colony was so small the last time I was there despite mile after mile of LFP in that area that if you don't know the exact location to look you'll never find any bugs there. IOW, the general disclosure of the location that was published is not good enough anymore.

You're right about the LFP though, it grows just about everywhere in about 2/3's of that counties 2500 square miles. But 99.999% of it does not support any H. e. mojavensis. You have to get lucky, or know the quirks that drive this bug that I discovered over those years to find them with any degree of success.

I will offer some tips though to increase your chances while in the St Geo area... Eriogonum faciculatum var utahensis is the main plant they use in SW UT. Eriogonum faciculatum var polifolium also grows in WaCO (H. e. clio's LFP in AZ), but the UT bugs rarely use it. Colonies are small and usually miles apart. Keep in mind the Utah bug lays very few eggs (30-50 total per female on average in mutiple half rings), so larva will be scarce even if you stumble into a colony. Even with the up and down weather that area has had this year most of the larva could be well past the gregarious stage and in fact nearing final instars and pupating. So you would be looking for single late instar larvae.

Larry,

Mi laikim bekim tok long email. Mi wan bel: Em i no gutpela putim long forum long wanem hap yu painim pastaim binatang. Yu ken save bai mi wokim gutpela rises na mi no kisim olgeta binatang, sapos mi painem em. Plis yu ken lusim tingting long tok pisin bilong mi. Mi lusim tingting planti olsem mi lapun yet. Mi sori tru.

Plis, yu ken larim yumi toktok. Mi laikim tok kwiktaim wantaim yu. Mi holim tok hait ol hap ol binitang stap. Na bai mi holim tok hait husat yu sapos yu laikim.

Terry

Larry,

Mi tok em i no tok gumi. Mi stap long Tekadu longpela taim liklik taim behain yu. Mi harim nem bilong yu long Peter Uyapango. Em i taim behain tru mi harim nem bilong yu. Yumi gat wankain ol wantok long PNG. Mi laikim yumi kamap wantok long hia, em tasol!

Olsem yu, mi bruk long tumas wokabaut (na binatang insait long liva, planti taim sik). Long dispela, mi askim yu halivim mi painim H. electra pikinini i no gat wokabaut planti tumas, em tasol.

Terry
(nem bilong PNG "Longlong Rasta Masta"

Terry,

Longpela taim PNG na tok pisin. Wantok bilong TAZ toktok em. Gutpela kas behain wik.

Larry

Dear Larry,

Thanks for your response and for allowing me to ascertain who you are. IOW, no one mentioned had any idea (and I didn't mean to imply that anyone did). I just was trying to get around the use of the forum threads and thought maybe one of the guys knew who you were. Yesterday, while thinking of a German-named 14,000 foot mountain that I won't climb again, either, I was led to the hypothesis that was tested and confirmed. Bai stap tok hait.

[I would like everyone on this forum to know that Larry is extremely special and brilliant individual; you are so very fortunate to have him as a participant and advisor. And, Larry, kudos to you for encouraging their interest. Please, people, raise your children to appreciate biodiversity and become entomologists! Larry and I are a dying breed...]

I certainly understand (as should everyone who reads this thread) your concern for posting population data on a public forum; and that is precisely why I have entreated you to correspond by private email. I, too, have my horror tales to tell. In 1967 I rediscovered the "lost moth" Annaphila lithosina in the Sierra Nevada and naively told several collectors about the colony. Since they are all dead now (both the colony and the collectors!), I won't speak ill of the dead by naming them. (Larry, you will recognize the cryptic references.) Within 48 hours BuckBau from Davis were at the site picking up the remaining larvae and LFP left behind by a marauding CH, who had driven all night from his home on the western edge of the Hayikwiir Mataar and ravaged the colony the day before. The colony NEVER recovered; completely extirpated. Having learned my lesson...

In 1968, I passed through southern Utah one September on my way back from Mexico and collected three worn males of H. electra off Hwy 91, flying near what I assume became the future "Shivwitz" site. I was excited, but I didn't mention them to anyone. And, given what you have told me in this forum, if I had, perhaps you would never have had the pleasure to collect them there yourself in later years.

Larry, let's just call H. electra a done deal. I do not really need to take the moth; I was simply quite taken by your knowledge of it and still am. My wife and I will be visiting friends in St. George and I thought that it would be fun to look for the larvae there. Something I had planned to do 40 years ago, but never did.

I would, instead, like to fry a much larger fish with you and discuss a much smaller moth. I am finishing up the revision for a section of the Heliothidinae for MONA. I have very strong reason to believe that a population of Heliothodes exists in the Spring Mountains. You should have seen Madia elegans mixed with Layia there. I have the GPS co-ordinates for at least some of the FLP; and I know this bug like you know H. electra.

Under these circumstances:

1) Will you tell me if you have taken the moth there or anywhere else in the Hayikwiir Mataar? All such populations are of extreme interest and will represent disjunct and isolated pockets of possibly new taxa. I already have eleven new species to add to the now monotypic genus.

2) If the answer to 1 above is affirmative, will you consider communicating with me about it?

With the greatest respect,
Terry
P.S. Tumora bai dokta sekim liva b'long mi long binatang. Gat wari yet long wokabaut bihain tru. LAPUN TUMAS!

Terry,

Thanks for the kind words although I doubt I'm worthy of them. However, since I can no longer do the field work to add more to the lepidopteran database I figure I can do the most good trying to pass some of the experience along to those who care to hear it. There's a lot of good people here, and many of them already know quite a bit about the NA leps and LFP's in general.

I've been on the Hayikwiir Mataar for 18-19 years now, but I've done very little with the Noctuids in that time. Too many other fish to fry that are in my own lepidopteran specialties IOW. I do know there are abundant Heliothidinae species in the area, but I mostly haven't given them a second glance. No doubt if there are any Heliothodes in the Spring Mountains, they have an excellent chance of being new sp/ssp though. Most of the lepidoptera in those mountains are isolated and have evolved into new sp or spp. I have only been working with the Papilionoidea, Hesperioidea and Bombycoidea superfamilies in the Spring Mountains (not Noctuoidea). Sorry.

My main email is still down from the move, and I don't have the time to spend on the phone right now with my service provider troubleshooting it. I did however remember today a temporary email addy from another provider that I checked and is working. So I sent you an email and gave you a bone to dig up while you are in St. George (H. e. mojavensis).

Larry

Terry, we know we're extremely fortunate to have Larry participating on our little amateur forum - we're just concerned about his health. Everybody here loves leps - we plant for them and sometimes raise them ourselves to keep the other critters from harming them.
Right now I'm still on cloud 9 from realizing I've got zebra swallowtail/E. marcellus eggs after YEARS of hoping for them!!!!
Sherry

Terry, what language is that you and Larry speak, other than English, that is?
Sherry

We all feel humbled to have Larry's expertise here on the forum. When he pays a compliment, you really soar; when he questions you, he makes you think. He is inspiring a lot of amateurs to be more deliberate in thinking, studying, and appreciating Lepidoptera.

Ladies, I'm the one who is fortunate to have stumbled onto this forum a couple of years ago. Gives me a place to pass some hours at something that was such a large and important portion of my life to me while hopefully helping stir the fire I had in others.

Sherry,
The jibberish is a form of English Pidgin in common use in the South Pacific islands, especially around PNG. With upwards of two hundred languages/dialects there, it bridges the gap between many of them. I had a great sawyer friend in Tasmania who along with his brother used to torture me with it to the point I learned some rudimentary basics for it in self defense. It has the same rudimentary characteristics as the other pidgin/creole languages (like Hawaiian pidgin more familair to Haoles), and they are all for about the same purpose, to bridge the gap. Been some years, so I am pretty rusty now but I can at least figure out the basic thoughts Terry was passing on and reply to them.

Butterflymomok and misssherry,

I am happy to see that you all know the value of Larry's expertise, but I am definitely not surprised. I just stumbled into the forum as a newbie, and it will take a while to examine and read through old threads. I will try to catch up and contribute as I may to the discussions.

Fortunately, my specialization is different than Larry's in that I work with noctuid moths primarily. I do a great deal of rearing and life history work. I stress the importance of valuing biodiversity because so much remains to be discovered, even right here in the US. The group referred to in my previous post has yielded 11 new species and one new genus and species in California alone. And we are talking about colorful day-flying moths that have simply been overlooked. I first found one new species in the MEDIAN STRIP of I-5! I was in a net swinging frenzy until the Highway Patrol intervened.

There are wonderful things to be discovered everywhere: here at home as well as in far flung jungles. As, it turns out, Larry and I passed like ships in the night in one of those far away jungles over a decade ago.

I didn't know that, of course, when I joined in the forum, but I couldn't shake the notion that I should know who Larry was. I was trying to place who he might be and used the the language of Papua New Guinea, tok pisin, to test the hypothesis and to offer my bona fides to Larry. The Larry I was thinking of would be one of the few people on earth to understand the references I wrote in that language. I am so happy to have rediscovered him!

Misssherry, if you look at our tok pisin entries you will see the word "wantok", which means "friend". Tok pisin is a true pidgin language. "Wantok" (friend) comes from "one talk", meaning sharing one form of talk or thought, a bond. On this forum, we are all talking of the same thing; we share a bond and a love for our natural world.

We, therefore exhibit "one talk". We are, therefore, all wantoks.

Terry
PS to Larry: Mi save tru yu wan bel...

How interesting, Terry!
I thought it must be some sort of fractured English, since I could recognize a few of the words.
You and Larry have really been to some exotic places!
Sherry

Larry,

Please check your alternate email addy. There is an email there for you from me, which contains my regular addy, to which you may respond only if so inclined. I am on my way today to start digging for that bone. Thanks so much!

Hmmmmm, I guess I will be like a bug-dog chasing "cats" in forum short-hand!

Terry

Everybody...

No email from you today Terry, so I logged into the other server direct with the temporary addy on it and found the firewall on it has been killing all email sent to me via the Garden Web (for about 2 years). Found two from you, a couple from Sandy and an old one from MissSherry buried in the SPAM folder. IOW, it is transfered to a SPAM folder by that server before it gets the chance to be forwarded to my main server where I normally check that email addy... so I never saw them. Guess I haven't logged into that server for that long or longer.

I had changed my forum email addy to one on my main server a few days ago, but that email is still down from the move. Add that my computer needs to be purged real bad, and I need to spend some hours on the phone with my provider to get some things fixed with my account. So sometime in the next week I'll be going off-line again to get everything cleaned up and working right again. Means I will have to back everything up, do a disk recovery that will purge both entire hard drives in it, and I'll have to reload all applications, databases and updates. With the masive database I have, it will take at least 48 hours once started if I can stay on it. So, I may be down for several days. I'll let you know here when I'm going off-line.

L.

Terry,

Since I can't be sure my temporary email addy will get it to you right now, I'm going to address your email here so you'll see it for sure before I go off-line (see post above).

As I said up front, I don't think I know you, or at least I don't remember knowing you if I did (sorry about that). I have been picking the old brain I assure you as it would embarrass me to forget a friend. Unfortunately with the move I don't know where the boxes are that contain all my field journals and contact data to check for you there, try to jog my memory. But a comment in your email confirms what I have suspected all along (and that due to some of your prior comments posted here). I am not who you think I am.

Based on what's been said...

1) Yes Hemileuciinae is one of my specialties, I did do a long study on all species, discovered many new colonies and records for them, including dozens of new colonies for the UT electra. The Hemileuca gang at both ULS and The Lep Soc know who I am and know I did that work without reporting it, and why I did not report it.

2) I did learn basic tok pisin, but not because I lived in PNG like you. I was badgered into it by friends in Tasmania.

3)I'm sure we did not pass in the night a decade ago in some far flung jungle. I have only been out of Nevada a few times in the last decade, but none of those trips were out of the country. In fact, I've been in no jungles/tropical rainforests since 1994.

4) OC was never one of my haunts, although I did go there on business a few times a year from the earliest 80's to the earliest 90's.

Sorry if this pops bubbles, but I really think you have not rediscovered who you think you have.

Even so, I hope that bone I tossed helped you on your St Geo trip. Sorry I didn't see your email before you left for SW UT.

L.