Moth-moving

LOL, I sometimes wonder, myself!

I hate using strong qualifying or cop-out language. NO ID of a MOTH from PHOTOGRAPHS should ever be considered sacrosanct. Almost all of the real experts that I consult qualify the IDs given to me with "of course, I'd have to have the specimen before me to REALLY know....." I've even been told "I'm pretty sure it is xxxxxxx but do not use my name or tell anyone I told you so."

It takes a while, sometimes a very long while, to build up a feeling of trust with my coterie of experts and I try very hard always to give them credit and not overstate what I am told. But everyone should know that even experts make mistakes, and I am no expert. I love being corrected and just hope to achieve a "moth ID batting average" of 90%-95% correctness. I know some museum directors who would be happy to know that their curation is better than 95% correct.

When I say Probably or Most Likely or Looks Like..... it means I think it is that species and that is what I would call the moth on my own pages or if I use the photo at MPG. But be cautious anyway and question the ID, check it out to see if you agree.

"Possibly" is a category where there is less "certainty" and, if I used the photo, I would label it [T] for tentative. I would still place the moth on the species page suggested with the notation as tentative. I personally think that doing that is preferable to burying it in a mass of genus level material.

"Might Be" often ain't. Probably is in that family, might not be in that genus.

I have to look up virtually every moth to check for ID, Hodges number and Latin name. Sometimes I will simply say Green Cloverworm Moth or a very few other common names when I think I absolutely KNOW the moth and can remember the name. But I don't do it often because I simply do not KNOW many moths that well.

I am basically a matcher of photographs and the only advantage I may have over many people is in the ability to, in most cases, quickly go to one of my personal pages or to the correct MPG plate and find the moth I am thinking of. But for many moths I have to scroll through a family or subfamily from beginning to end. There are simply too many similar species, and the selected ID is often based on gut feelings.

So forget about "Golden Opinions." Question everything. Make me happy by finding my errors. I will always thank you for doing so because you will often also be correcting an error at MPG. And I really do think that correcting errors is my highest calling.

"Probably" and "looks like" get moved to whatever he says they probably are or look like, i.e. treated like a firm ID. Given "possibly" or other weaker pronouncements without an explicit constraint I usually move to family; some families have similar looking moths that are not closely related. If you know what you're doing, you might move them to a lower level.