Keeping the Passion?

[neominois]

This year, 2017, marks my 20th year of collecting insects.  I've had the opportunity to collect in some nice areas over the years.  I suppose I'm not the most traveled collector, collecting in the United States mostly, California, Texas, Arizona, Maine, and especially in my home state of Colorado.  I've had a couple trips abroad to Alberta, a little collecting in Germany, and most recently a trip last June to Peru.

The Peru trip has caused a great challenge to me with this upcoming season...  How to stay motivated in my local area?  Peru was a trip I had dreamed of my entire collecting life, and once there, the diversity and wonder took me back to my first years as a naive young Lepidopterist collecting everything, and each specimen was a new discovery.  I love that feeling, finding something you've never seen in person, watching it, stalking it, capturing it...  it's a dopamine rush...

So my challenge is not that I don't have passion, but that anytime I go out with my net locally, I have little motivation on collecting because I have seen it all, and found all the species I can find.  There's no reason to collect the same thing over and over, year after year, at least for me...  and areas new to me, where there are new species here in the states gets further and further away.  So, what to do?

Yes, planning trips abroad is the answer, but as a teacher, I have a limited income and can't just leave to South America on a whim.  I'm trying to plan another trip to Peru for a later date, and possibly French Guiana, but money is always an issue with travel.  A couple years ago I got obsessed with finding as many North American subspecies as possible, but find it hard to drive across the western USA to arrive at an area where butterflies are scarce.  Here on a good day I might see as many butterflies in a day as I saw in 5 minutes in the jungles of Peru!  Curse you Peru, have you ruined my perception of butterflies!

With the actual collecting of new species becoming more and more challenging, I have also gone to trading butterflies online and...  something I never thought I'd want to do, purchasing specimens as well.  It makes sense to do this I suppose, as venturing into the jungles of Borneo seems very unlikely, but it lacks the thrill of seeing them for yourself.

I need to find that spark again, suggestions?  

[wollastoni]

That's a good topic, and all of us will find his own way to answer it.

Personnally :
- I collect a tropical genus that is impossible to complete (Delias) so I am sure it will never stop ! You could focus on such a tropical genus with both affordable and rare species (Delias, Charaxes/Polyura, Catasticta, ...)
- locally (in France), I don't collect anymore but I do some population surveys for the French Museum. It makes common species interesting
- locally, I also add "live macro-photography" to my entomological passion. It also makes common species interesting, and it helps discover other insect families in depth.
- then I have my websites. It is a hard work but it is Always fun to work around entomology.

There are several other ways to keep the passion high (associations, insect rearing, books, history of entomology...). I am sure you will find yours !

[Deleted]

I have said it many times but I don't think you choose to study entomology, it chooses you. Many people that I knew as a child and young man growing up had a passing interest in entomology and often came with me on collecting trips but soon lost interest at the onset of adulthood. The passion stayed with me and although there are times when I want to pack it all in for one reason or another I just can't. One thing I would advise, at least here in the UK, or in any country where the laws are making it very difficult to collect native butterflies is to switch to moths, far more species, very few if any are protected, easier to breed and not as drab and dull as you might expect, there is endless scope for discovering something new even locally.

[nomad]

or where the butterflies are so few, how about studying the vast array of other insects in the many families, even here in the UK that is a enough for many lifetimes. The wealth of insects is astonishing and you never know what you might find, it has certainly rekindled my passion, in my later stages of my life I have become a field entomologist instead of only a lepidopterist. 

[Deleted]

I remember on my collecting trips with T W Harman that after a while he would take himself off and leave us to it, he used to search out microlepidoptera in which field he was very knowledgeable and other insects, while I find them interesting I feel I would overstretch my meagre intellect if I moved into fields other than lepidoptera.

[joee30]

I can assume age wise, you might be in your 30's or maybe 40's( me too), but all I can say is that you live in the better part of the country when regarding collecting. You have the eastern leps coming through the great plains, and all the insteresting western species. Sure, after a certain time they might get boring, but you have many places you can go without spending 1000's of dollars like California, Arizona, or Washington if you have only done local collecting. If you have travelled, then try something different like mothing or rearing. I do both, and also started photography as well. Even here locally, there is more to be found than one may think.

[jshuey]

May 7, 2017 16:53:44 GMT neominois said:

The Peru trip has caused a great challenge to me with this upcoming season...  How to stay motivated in my local area?  Peru was a trip I had dreamed of my entire collecting life, and once there, the diversity and wonder took me back to my first years as a naive young Lepidopterist collecting everything, and each specimen was a new discovery.  I love that feeling, finding something you've never seen in person, watching it, stalking it, capturing it...  it's a dopamine rush...

So my challenge is not that I don't have passion, but that anytime I go out with my net locally, I have little motivation on collecting because I have seen it all, and found all the species I can find.  There's no reason to collect the same thing over and over, year after year, at least for me...  and areas new to me, where there are new species here in the states gets further and further away.  So, what to do?

I need to find that spark again, suggestions?  

I totally get what you are saying.   I have not swung a net in the USofA in 5 years.  And the decade before that - those few bugs are still mostly in papers.  Here's what I've done. 

Develop contacts that can get you permits in tropical landscapes.  I figured out Belize - there are people who can probably figure out Peru for you.  I know people who do Panama - and it is apparently pretty easy to get a permit  Then travel on you own or preferably in a small group.  A typical 2-week trip to Central America generally costs me about $1,300 per person (plus air fare).  Most of that is car rental - splitting a small SUV three ways will cut a few hundred off the tab.  We stay in cheep cabins in the bush where we can collect out the door and drive to other spots. We eat local.  At some places we have to cook for ourselves. We often have no hot water for shawers.  We filter our own drinking water. We don't always have electricity at night.

Thanks to the internet, you can locate and reserve places to stay in advance. OpenStreetmap.org is amazing for finding cabins and hotels off the beaten path.  Thanks to Google Earth, you can see how they look from a collecting perspective.  

Then you just have to pull the trigger and just do it!

John

 

[neominois]

May 8, 2017 23:34:50 GMT jshuey said:

I totally get what you are saying.   I have not swung a net in the USofA in 5 years.  And the decade before that - those few bugs are still mostly in papers.  Here's what I've done. 

Develop contacts that can get you permits in tropical landscapes.  I figured out Belize - there are people who can probably figure out Peru for you.  I know people who do Panama - and it is apparently pretty easy to get a permit  Then travel on you own or preferably in a small group.  A typical 2-week trip to Central America generally costs me about $1,300 per person (plus air fare).  Most of that is car rental - splitting a small SUV three ways will cut a few hundred off the tab.  We stay in cheep cabins in the bush where we can collect out the door and drive to other spots. We eat local.  At some places we have to cook for ourselves. We often have no hot water for shawers.  We filter our own drinking water. We don't always have electricity at night.

Thanks to the internet, you can locate and reserve places to stay in advance. OpenStreetmap.org is amazing for finding cabins and hotels off the beaten path.  Thanks to Google Earth, you can see how they look from a collecting perspective.  

Then you just have to pull the trigger and just do it!

John

 

Thanks for the info, I got some funding through the University I work at to help with Peru, but overall, they are little help for me.  I would love to make contacts to travel to new places and collect.  Your trips to Belize sound wonderful, and rather inexpensive.  Feel free to contact me if you want to go again.  I'm rather ignorant on obtaining permits, and knowing where to travel to find the good spots, but am will to be a participant and learn!

[exoticimports]

Same here. I rarely go out with a net locally. I do blacklight occasionally. Most of the stuff I get locally is incidental- road kill, stuff I find at lights.

[miguel]

With the new discoveries in european butterflies I´m beginning to collect species that I ignored from years as Spialia sertorius or Melitaea didyma.