South Carolina Moths Searchable Checklist

How the checklist was made

Most of the records in the underlying database were obtained by personal visits to the appropriate museums, at which I gathered information from the tags beneath the specimens. (Unfortunately, the specimen data of most museum collections have not yet been placed in databases that include all of the information needed for my work--if a museum has a database, it only rarely includes the date of collection.) The list of collections examined does include all that are within close proximity to the state and are thus likely to have many South Carolina specimens. A number of records have been (and continue to be) contributed by individuals.

Limitations of the checklist

(1) Data describe only adult moths that were captured from "the wild." The only exception to this rule is if a species is described as raised from egg, larva, or pupa and it is the only data-point available for a particular county, and the immature stage was clearly collected within the county. In such cases, the specimen is noted but the date of collection is omitted.

(2) Not all collections have been completely examined. Although I have thoroughly searched through the moth collection of the National Museum of Natural History, I have not examined that of the American Museum of Natural History or the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera Research.

(3) Collections other than that of Furman University may add specimens periodically and I will be unaware of the additions unless notified by their curators.

(4) I did not attempt to verify the identifications of specimens in collections other than that of Furman University. Therefore, I was dependent upon the determinations of those who worked with those collections.

(5) I undoubtedly missed a few specimens in those collections that were not primarily South Carolina oriented.

(6) The question of names is always a confounding factor. Unfortunately, the database allows only one name for each taxonomic category. My "rule of thumb" was to use the Hodges Check List name for genus and species unless I knew for certain that it has been supplanted by a different name upon which most experts agree . For instance, the Arctiid genus called Apantesis in the Hodges Check List has been split, with most of the species going to the genus Grammia; I followed this well-recognized change.

(7) I did not record data for every South Carolina specimen seen. When working with a collection, my guideline was to record the data for at least one specimen of a particular species from each county represented in the collection. If there were several specimens of that species from a given county, I recorded data from one specimen collected in each month. If there were several specimens of that species collected in different years, I recorded data from one specimen representing each decade (eg., one from the 1970s, one from the 1980s, etc.).

Acknowledgments

I thank the curators of the various museums I have visited. These include John Morse (Clemson University), Brian Scholtens (College of Charleston), Richard Vogt (Dominick Collection at University of South Carolina), Cecil Smith (University of Georgia), Robert Blinn and Lewis Deitz (North Carolina State University), and a number of staff members at the National Museum of Natural History. The website maintained by Michael Pogue further helped me with Noctuid records at the National Museum.

I also thank individual contributors of data, including Richard Peigler, Heather Carr, , Jon J. Grier, David Herlong, Howard Harris, and a number of contributors to the Season Summary of The Lepidopterists' Society. In addition, several journal papers concerning experiments with South Carolina species are cited.

I am indebted to Furman University, which provided both sabbatical leave time and server space to house the website and database. I also thank Dr. Kevin Treu and his Furman-Wofford Mellon workshop (sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation) for providing hands-on instruction in building web-based databases.