Next Meeting

Meetings are over for the summer, and will resume in September. In the meantime, join us for field trips and insect counts. Details should be posted on the respective web pages by the end of May.

FINAL Last call: photos needed for "Butterflies of Ontario"

For a ROM field guide " Butterflies of Ontario", the ROM is steill seeking images of adult butterflies, chrysalyses and caterpillars for certain species -- see March 2013 list). Images of specimens in their natural habitat are preferred. Images will be accepted until April 10.

You must have copyright of any images that you submit and photographers will be credited appropriately if an image is used in this field guide. Submission of images does not guarantee that they will be used. Please indicate if remuneration for use of your image(s) is required.

If you have images that you would like to submit for consideration, please contact Antonia Guidotti at antoniag@rom.on.ca or at 416-586-5765.

Other Insect Activities and News

April 10, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Canadian Pollinator Conservation 2013: Next Steps. Room 108, Koffler House, University of Toronto.

April 18. Future Food Salon 2 (insects as food, with talk and samples).

April 27 to May 26, Special Visitation Sale (insect specimens), Thorne's Insect Shoppe, London

May 1, 6:50 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., Wings & Weather Festival, Waterloo (Don Davis is speaking on the 2012 butterfly season)

Friday, May 31 to Sunday, June 2. Carden Nature Festival (near Orillia).

June 2-6, Orford, Quebec. Third International Entomophagous Insects Conference (i.e., conference on insect predators and parasitoids). The location is 125 km east of Montreal.

Oct. 20-23, 2013. Guelph. Joint Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of Canada and the Entomological Society of Ontario. Celebrating 150 Years of the ESO!

Xi Wang's 33-page report The Pipevine Swallowtail: Life Cycle and Ecology was published in November 2012. The price is $5 for members and $7 for non-members, plus postage (if not picked up at a meeting).

In November 2012 many updates of the online butterfly atlas of Ontario were made. Access the atlas here. A hard copy is in the plans after all relevant data has been included.

"The Butterflies of Toronto", a free 68-page full-colour soft-cover booklet authored by a group including several TEA members, was released in mid-September 2011. It is now out of print. Probably it won't be reprinted but will be put on the City of Toronto website, but as of May 2013 the date when this will occur is unknown.

For a list of general nature events in Ontario, see Richard Aaron's page.

Read more Ontario insect news: see the Fall 2012 newsletter of the Entomological Society of Ontario. Also see the September 2012 newsletter of the Entomological Society of Canada.

A noteworthy publication about butterflies and their conservation: Sentinels on the Wing: The Status and Conservation of Butterflies in Canada

 Takes Flight!
Try out www.ebutterfly.ca, a website for entering and displaying butterfly records put together by Maxim Larrivée of the University of Ottawa. The TEA is one of the sponsoring organizations. All Ontario data will be provided to the TEA seasonal summaries and butterfly atlas project, so “eButterfly” provides an alternative way to store and submit your data. The hope is that this will be easier than entering the data yourself on a spreadsheet, as his site saves each person’s own past butterfly monitoring sites and allows the species observed to be checked off from a provincial species list.

Keep in mind that all records submitted to eButterfly are plotted as exact points on the publicly-accessible eButterfly maps, unless you specifically ask for the data to be recorded as “sensitive” or “confidential.” This may be important if you are submitting records of endangered species or you are reporting data from areas for which there is no public access.

Records needed for seasonal summaries

Do you have butterfly and/or odonate (dragonfly and damselfly) records that you would like to submit to the annual provincial summaries? The Toronto Entomologists’ Association (T.E.A.) produces two annual summaries (Ontario Lepidoptera and Ontario Odonata) that serve to compile and summarize the records of these insect groups across the province of Ontario. These publications also serve as a forum for notes and articles on aspects of biology, distribution, behaviour, survey work, etc. Photographs are also welcome, especially of significant records.

This fall and winter, the Editors and Compilers of Ontario Lepidoptera are currently soliciting records, notes, articles and photographs from the 2012 season. More information on the summary, how to submit records, and a downloadable records template can be found at this link or by contacting either Colin Jones (colin.jones@ontario.ca Tel 705-755-2166) or Ross Layberry (rosslayberry@yahoo.ca). Submissions are being accepted until January 31, 2013.

The Editors and Compilers of Ontario Odonata are currently soliciting records, notes, articles and photographs from the 2006-2012 seasons. The plan is to combine the records from these years into a single volume with a new format. More information on the summary, how to submit records, and a downloadable records template can be found at this link or by contacting Colin Jones (colin.jones@ontario.caTel: 705-755-2166).

The editors and compilers of both summaries are also interested in receiving any and all records from previous years that have not yet been submitted so that they can be added to the atlas databases.

Past Lepidoptera summaries from 1969 to 2006-07 are available for download at this link.

MNR Permit

Raise or collect monarch butterflies or swallowtails? Anyone who is involved in these activities needs a permit. Contact us if you are a TEA member and want to be covered by the club's permit.

Our Publications

Ontario Lepidoptera 2011 appeared in print in April 2012: the latest of our butterfly summaries; moths are also included in years when a volunteer is available.

The Bumble Bees of Algonquin Provincial Park: A Field Guide -- also new November 2010.

Checklist of the Butterflies of the Toronto Region, 3rd edition, 2007. Includes flight seasons. Compiled by Barry Harrison. Available as a free download.

Many older TEA publications are now available for free download on our publications page. This includes all back issues of our annual seasonal summary other than the two most recent issues -- over 2,000 pages of observations spanning more than 30 years. Copies of our Ontario Insects newsjournal from 1994 to 2005 are also available.

Our Association

The Toronto Entomologists' Association (T.E.A.) welcomes everyone who is interested in the insects of Ontario. We are an association of mostly amateur entomologists. Although our meetings are held in Toronto, we extend far beyond that in our field trips, our membership, and our seasonal summaries. Come to our meetings, join us on our field trips, purchase our publications, apply for the research grant, join us! The T.E.A. is a registered charity and a non-profit educational and scientific organization formed to promote interest in insects, to encourage co-operation among amateur and professional entomologists, to educate and inform non-entomologists about insects, entomology and related fields, to aid in the preservation of insects and their habitats and to issue publications in support of these objectives.

Membership in the TEA

Anyone with an interest in insects is encouraged to join the Toronto Entomologists' Association. Please see our Membership Page for more details.

Help Insect Artists, Researchers and Authors

Volunteers needed: We are seeking to build a network of volunteers to help us survey butterflies in 13 regions that our previous research is predicting will be most impacted by global changes. The goal is to develop long term monitoring of these 13 regions and build a website through which Canadian lepidopterists share and view their observations. Contact Maxim Larrivée of the Department of Biology of the University of Ottawa at mlarrive@uottawa.ca or (613) 562-5800 x2594.

Do you have an old insect collection you are not using? Amy Swartz of Toronto is looking for dead insects, including pinned ones, that she can make into works of art. She has a Master of Fine Art degree and teaches at the Toronto School of Art. She has done 64 insect pieces so far (see picture below) and she would like to do more. She will pay for shipment costs.

larger version

Tiger moth study. Specimens, data and photos of the Spotted tussock moth (L. maculata) are sought by Ken Strothkamp, Lewis & Clark College, Oregon.

Be a pollinator observer: Pollination Canada is looking for people who will record pollinator types and numbers repeatedly at a specific location. Observations can be for as little as 10 minutes at a time. TEA members would be a great fit for this research task.

DNA barcoding: Paul Hebert of the University of Guelph is leading a research group which is attempting to identify all lepidoptera species through a segment of their DNA. For this purpose, he needs to obtain up to 5 specimens of each species. For details on the species needed, see the Excel spreadsheet, which is derived from Paul Hebert's Barcode of Life site.

Did You Know?

TEA member Don Davis holds the Guiness Record for documenting the "longest migration of a butterfly." A monarch he tagged and released at Presqu'ile Provincial Park near Brighton, Ontario in September 1986 was recovered alive the following April at Austin, Texas, having spent the winter in Mexico at the overwintering sites.

Stay in Touch!

We can send you regular emails about coming activities -- join the list. You will be informed of meetings, insect counts, and field trips.