Jon Sullivan

Here's another elegant NZ moth for you. This one's called the Alpine Treasure Owlet (*Ichneutica maya*).

It's mostly seen up in the mountains in the South Island but also in the mountains of the lower North Island. I saw this one up at Boyle Village in the North Canterbury Southern Alps.

As is the case with many NZ moths, the "life history in the wild of this species is unknown, nor has its larval host species been confirmed" (quoting its Wikipedia page, which is referencing Robert Hoare's 2019 Fauna Series revision of the genus). We've got 144 observations of it so far on #iNaturalist.

https://www.inaturalist.nz/observations/342867458
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mollivan_jon/55146832010

#mothodon #Lepidoptera #moths #Noctuidae #Ichneutica #nz #entomology

Here are two views of one adult of NZ's antlion species, *Weeleus acutus*. Its predatory larvae live in Sarlacc-like pits in sandy ground where they catch unwary passing insects.

I uploaded my photo of Mike Bowie photographing the antlion to #iNaturalist and then discovered that he'd also uploaded his photo of me.

They're amazing creatures, and well worth photographing twice.

https://www.inaturalist.nz/observations?verifiable=any&place_id=any&field:Same%20specimen,%20different%20observer=69609252

#entomology #nz #insects #entomology #Myrmeleontidae

Moth? Moth!

Here's the NZ endemic moth, the appropriately named Exquisite Carpet, *Asaphodes adonis*, which I just uploaded to #iNaturalist. It's known only from NZ's South Island.

It's always a treat to find these.

https://inaturalist.nz/observations/341348871

#mothodon #moths #Lepidoptera #nz #entomology

I've been counting birds on my bike work commute between Christchurch and Lincoln, NZ, since 2003. On Friday, I counted my *first ever* Kōtuku Ngutupapa, Royal Spoonbill, on the route.

It was feeding in a paddock that had been recently scraped clear preparing it for a housing subdivision, but in the meantime had filled with water after a heavy rain. There are also restored wetlands nearby that I hope was what attracted it in. Perhaps there will be more.

#birds #nz #spoonbill #EcologicalMonitoring #wildcounts #UrbanEcology

https://inaturalist.nz/observations/340743507

I gave one of my first-year university lectures today, on biodiversity and extinction rates, in which I mention the recent population growth of the Earth's most abundant large animal species ever: us.

I still remain completely gobsmacked by the magnitude of the world's recent human population growth.

8.27 billion: today's population, according to worldometers.info.

7.2 billion: in 2015 when I started teaching the course.

6.8 billion: in 2008 when my daughter was born.

3.8 billion: in 1971 when I was born.

2.3 billion: in 1946 when my parents were born.

1.9 billion: in 1923 when my Dad’s Dad was born.

So 1.9 billion to 8.2 billion in just over a century!

I worry about whether we can sustain this many people on the planet long-term while retaining and restoring a thriving wild biosphere that supports us.

Some of us are going to have to learn to use a lot less energy and resources.

#SoManyPeople #HumanPopulation

Introducing *Austramathes coelacantha*!

I uploaded this moth to iNaturalist from my moth lighting last month in the NZ mountains. It's now the first iNat record of this NZ endemic moth, which was first described as a species in 2017.

This adds to the five records of the species on GBIF from the NZ Arthropod Collection (four specimens from 1975 and one from 2023).

It's known (so far) from shrublands and beech forests of central and eastern South Island. Its caterpillars have not been confirmed yet, although they're expected to be on *Melicytus* (mahoe and relatives).

Big thanks go to NZ moth expert Neville Hudson for identifying this. Neville has so far made 171,359(!) species identifications on iNaturalist, almost all moths, and all done for free. It's an extraordinary contribution to our knowledge of NZ moths.

https://inaturalist.nz/observations/338636198

#mothodon #moths #Lepidoptera #nz #iNaturalist #iNaturalistNZ #GBIF #entomology #CitizenScience

I went to a fantastic seminar today at the University of Canterbury by Carl Bergstrom (@ct_bergstrom@fediscience.org), titled “Information Foraging in a Social Media World.” Carl has been applying his knowledge of how information flows through ecological and evolutionary systems to better understand our digital information networks.

He views humans as fundamentally information foragers, and he compared the massive digital information network we’ve built to the excess of high calorie sweet and fatty foods. Neither are necessarily good for us in excess.

Information used to be hard to find and we spent a lot of our time processing it. Now we live with a hyper-abundance of information and we spend most of our time filtering information instead of processing it. Carl hinted that this ratio of filtering to processing differs between the generations, something that teachers need to consider.

He ended with LLMs, describing LLMs as fundamentally depersonalising, as they insert themselves between people in our digital information networks. He is also concerned about how easily LLMs can be used at scale to manipulate people, and communities of people, for commercial and political purposes.

In universities he sees the need for a radically trans-disciplinary crisis discipline focused on information. We quickly need to better understand, and anticipate, all the social changes that are happening.

It’s a lot to think about.