GMS NEWS Weeks 19-27 Late Summer 2010
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GMS NEWS Weeks 19-27 Late Summer 2010 Scheme overview for late summer 2010 – Norman Lowe pp. 2-5 Words from Dave Grundy – Winter GMS etc – pp. 5-7 East Midlands Report - Roger Freestone pp. 8-10 Scotland Report – Heather Young pp. 10-13 ID spot – Tom Tams pp. 13-14 Welsh Report – Norman Lowe p. 15 SE Round-up – Malcolm Bridge/David Gardner pp. 16-17 “A prickly subject” – Heather Young – pp. 18-19 “Yorkshire visitors” – David Baker pp. 19-23 Adverts for Atropos, Focus Optics and ALS – pp. 24-26 GMS sites as in 2009 1 Scheme overview for late summer 2010 – Norman Lowe Here are the results for the whole of the GMS for the late summer period. Those of you who were kind enough to comment on my previous efforts seemed to think they were interesting so I’ll follow a broadly similar pattern to the last review, although in the interest of brevity I’ve left out the analysis of the 4 regions that have been amassing data over the past 4 years. Again, please let me have any thoughts on what you’d like to see in future. The commonest moths recorded throughout the British Isles The following table shows the results for the commonest species in the British Isles for the late summer 2010, Weeks 19-27. This time I’ve included all the core species with a total of over 2000 moths and scoring more than 10 moths per garden – 20 species in total, including one species aggregate. This compares with a cut-off of 100 moths and 5 per garden for early summer, so presumably you’ve been catching more moths this quarter. 2010 2009 Increase/ 210 gardens 211 gardens decrease Posn Name Comments Mean Mean since Total per Total per 2009 garden garden 1(1) Large Yellow Underwing 37624 179.2 31010 146.97 21.90 2(2) Setaceous Hebrew Character 12947 61.7 9619 45.59 35.23 3(4) Dark Arches 9628 45.8 5850 27.73 65.34 4(-) Common Rustic aggregate 9374 44.6 Not recorded 2009 5(19) Garden Grass-veneer 6760 33.0 1959 9.51 246.75 Not core sp. 2009 6(3) Lesser Broad-bordered YU 6671 31.8 7516 35.62 -10.82 7(11) Common Footman 5060 24.1 3019 14.31 68.38 8(16) Shuttle-shaped Dart 4673 22.3 2052 10.42 113.55 9(5) Flame Shoulder 4079 19.4 5289 25.07 -22.52 10(8) Riband Wave 3983 19.0 3466 16.43 15.44 11(21) Vine's Rustic 3691 17.6 1441 8.43 108.50 Not core sp. 2009 12(26) Agriphila tristella 3570 17.4 1246 6.39 172.53 Not core sp. 2009 13(22) Heart & Dart 3342 15.9 1535 7.27 118.90 14(24) Agriphila straminella 3188 15.6 1331 6.83 127.69 Not core sp. 2009 15(13) Mother of Pearl 3122 14.9 2620 12.42 20.27 16(9) Lesser Yellow Underwing 3054 14.5 3291 15.6 -6.78 17(6) Square-spot Rustic 2512 12.0 3524 16.7 -28.37 18(10) Dingy Footman 2435 11.6 2096 14.76 -21.44 Not core sp. 2009 19(17) Willow Beauty 2233 10.6 1987 9.94 6.98 Not core sp. 2009 20(14) Silver Y 2091 10.0 2421 11.47 -13.19 How do the figures compare with last year? In the table I’ve shown all those that have increased in black and those that have decreased in red. 13 species have increased, some by a large margin. In particular three species of grass-veneer have each increased by over 100%. Does anyone have any views why this should be? Vine’s Rustic seems to have increased in numbers but the increase in Heart and Dart numbers might have reflected a slightly later flight period and it will be interesting to see whether there was an increase over the whole year. The six decreases are all fairly small and perhaps shouldn’t be a cause for worry unless they are part of a long-term trend. 2 Differences across the British Isles So what are the differences for these 20 species between the areas? The table below shows the mean number of moths per garden in each area. Most of you will be familiar with the area abbreviations but anyway, here they are: CI Channel Islands NW North West England CY Wales SC Scotland EE East of England SE South East England EM East Midlands SW South West England IR Ireland WM West Midlands NE North East England YH Yorkshire and Humberside WM CI IR SC CY EE NE EM YH SE NW SW Large Yellow U’wing 146.0 63.8 203 160.9 193.3 54.9 350.8 110.8 396.4 34.2 353.1 170.1 Set Hebrew Character 31.7 46.8 117.2 0.0 48.6 45.5 0.7 52.8 64.1 8.5 9.8 170.0 Dark Arches 35.7 72.6 48.2 51.1 33.5 58.9 77.2 62.5 90.8 24.9 45.4 37.5 Common Rustic agg. 35.1 42.4 45.8 61.0 27.7 34.3 45.5 37.2 94.1 22.8 43.4 63.3 Garden Grass-veneer 8.4 27.2 3.4 2.4 9.6 200.0 11.7 26.2 37.4 49.2 3.5 21.0 Lesser Broad-b’d YU 32.8 81.4 54 50.4 21.5 23.9 19.8 24.3 47.8 19.9 31.7 32.6 Common Footman 14.0 17.8 7.6 0.1 22.7 39.1 8.8 24.4 70.7 20.7 17.5 28.4 Shuttle-shaped Dart 15.9 197.2 0 0.1 5.1 32.9 26.3 16.5 15.3 18.0 3.1 36.3 Flame Shoulder 10.2 21.8 33.2 1.8 24.4 11.2 0.7 10.4 10.2 3.4 10.7 48.1 Riband Wave 25.6 19.2 4.6 5.0 9.317.716.325.123.936.1 9.2 21.7 Vine's Rustic 1.6 210 0 0.0 1.0 30.6 0.0 4.0 3.6 36.0 0.0 35.1 Agriphila tristella 8.8 48.4 8.6 27.3 23.5 29.5 7.3 17.3 26.3 22.0 8.1 12.9 Heart & Dart 24.3 15.6 5.6 0.0 11.2 14.0 18.5 17.9 13.7 17.5 9.9 19.4 Agriphila straminella 8.7 5 31.8 1.7 16.4 33.8 20.7 7.5 41.2 15.8 8.2 13.3 Mother of Pearl 16.4 10.2 6.2 1.6 10.0 29.3 1.5 17.2 17.3 11.4 10.4 19.4 Lesser YU 14.7 13.8 37.6 37.7 9.3 5.7 35.8 1.5 38.1 4.2 20.2 9.3 Square-spot Rustic 7.4 28 27.8 3.4 4.5 16.7 4.3 22.3 16.8 7.7 11.3 15.8 Dingy Footman 3.2 25.6 0 0.0 28.3 7.4 0.0 3.7 0.8 2.8 0.1 26.9 Willow Beauty 11.9 11.6 3.4 2.9 6.3 8.7 17.5 17.0 10.4 13.2 5.9 14.6 Silver Y 3.7 13 2.8 9.2 5.2 27.8 10.7 9.3 34.1 3.8 7.1 8.0 For each species I’ve shown the highest (or near-to-highest) mean-per-garden figures in red and the lowest in blue. This quarter Scotland again shows the greatest number of lowest means but this time the high numbers are fairly evenly spread out. 8 species – Dark Arches, Large Yellow Underwing, Common Rustic, Lesser Broad-border, Riband Wave, Agriphila tristella, Square-spot Rustic and Willow Beauty – were generally common and the highest number count was less than 10 times the lowest. Some species were are found in each area but with a much greater number difference, so Garden Grass-veneer, Common Footman and Flame Shoulder, were more than 50 times more frequent in the area with the highest count than that with the lowest. Other species were only locally common with Vine’s Rustic recorded from 8 of the 12 areas and Dingy Footman from 9. Again, I’ve produced a table of regional top 10s showing apparent regional variations by using different colours: brown for the western species, red for the southern and green for the eastern. This time I couldn’t find any that seemed to be characteristic only of northern areas, 3 although Lesser Yellow Underwing was perhaps most common in parts of the north. Not surprisingly, Vine’s Rustic was commonest in the south and it will be interesting to chart its expected march north over the next few years. Dingy Footman and, rather to my surprise, Flame Shoulder were commonest in the west. I wasn’t aware that Flame Shoulder showed a preference for the west side – is this real do you think or just coincidence? Down the east side the two species that stood out were Garden Grass-veneer and Riband Wave.