INVERTEBRATE ALERT
This blog provides an informal forum for terrestrial invertebrate watchers to post recent sightings of interesting observations in the southern Vancouver Island region. Please send your sightings by email to Jeremy Tatum (tatumjb352@gmail.com). Be sure to include your name, phone number, the species name (common or scientific) of the invertebrate you saw, location, date, and number of individuals. If you have a photograph you are willing to share, please send it along. Click on the title above for an index of past sightings.The index is updated most days.

March 1

2017 March 1

 

   Best wishes for St David’s Day, Val.

 

   Dar Churcher photographed the micro moth below in Metchosin last week.  Many thanks to Eric LaGasa for identifying it for us.  Eric writes:  This nice image is a very dark Oegoconia novimundi, a fairly common detritivore species that does seem to overwinter as an adult and can be very common at porch lights in summer.

 

  It apparently also has an English name:  Four-spotted Yellowneck.   It is the first representative of its Family to appear on Invert Alert.

 

Oegoconia novimundi (Lep.:  Autostichidae)  Dar Churcher

 

 

  In the February 16 posting, we mentioned the appeal for volunteers for “butterfly rangers” for the David Suzuki Foundation’s Butterfly Project.  I am told that, in spite of the very short notice before the application deadline, there were more than 100 applications from Victoria.  Wow! Isn’t that something!  If any contributors to the Invert Alert Website are among the rangers, we would be glad to hear how things go.