Silas J. Eckhardt

You could also contact me here. I usually check my email 10 plus times a day (a lot), same with iNat. You will likely get a prompt reply.

Richmond, VA

I am a high school student in Richmond, VA. I have had an interest in insects since I was a toddler. I kinda started ignoring them for a while until I was much older. As a 14 year old Freshman (as of July 2022 I'm a rising Junior) in high school, I enrolled in a Natural History class. We had an assignment the first quarter, which was to observe 25 insects, write about them, and collect (pin) ten of them. I pinned 36 by the end of the quarter! Since then I've been avidly collecting, and I've got over 200 specimens. I'd like to credit Mr. Tito, the Natural History teacher (and the English, History, philosophy teacher at my 16-student school). Besides collecting I like to take nature photos. I'm currently terrible at it, but hope to improve. My favorite things to collect and study right now are beetles, as well as ants. I like to study the symbiotic relationships between certain insects and plants, such as the intriguing relationship between the yucca moth and the yucca. I like to look at the plants I have in my back yard, and observe (and collect) what insects are associated with which plants. For example, I have Asiatic Dayflower in my backyard. I also have two beetles that are associated with that plant, the Six Spotted Neolema, and Oulema melanoplus.

I live in a city, so it is interesting to see which bugs and plants thrive in the urban environment where I live. I also go to a school that is surrounded by forests, hiking trails, and open fields. like to keep track of the insects there as well, of course. In fact, 3/4ths of my collection is stuff from school.
These are some records for the state of VA:


My Equipment
I use a Nikon D3200, a dslr. This has no macro lens, flash extensions, but I'm saving up for that stuff. For pictures of specimens I use a USB microscope with a built in camera.

Silas Eckhardt