Abstract:I present a check list of 494 Lepidoptera species (including 477
species of Macrolepidoptera) I collected at the
University of Florida’s Katharine Ordway Preserve between 3 April 1999 and 1
April 2000.Surveys were conducted in
the northwest corner of the preserve and were concentrated in turkey oak/longleaf
pine scrub savanna, with a more limited amount of survey conducted in a hydric
hardwood forest corridor along a small stream near the edge of a lake.Most survey work was conducted at night, but
some diurnal surveys were conducted as well.
Introduction:The Katharine Ordway Preserve is
located in Putnam County, Florida, and is managed by the University of Florida’s Department of Wildlife Ecology
and Conservation.While the Ordway
Preserve is approximately 9,000 acres, my Lepidoptera survey work was confined
to the northwest corner of the preserve, except for some minor diurnal survey
work.A variety of habitat types occur
in the preserve.The northwest corner of
the preserve is dominated by uplands with early successional turkey
oak-longleaf pine sandhill scrub savanna, and this habitat was the primary
focus of my Lepidoptera surveys at the preserve.A portion of the turkey oak-longleaf pine
savanna area investigated (along the first north side road) had charring on the
pine trunks (suggesting past fire) whereas in another area (the sandy road past
Blue Pond) the pines were uncharred, but I was unable
to find out information on past management history of this site beyond the fact
that fire management is utilized in the preserve.Xeric oak
forest is another habitat type present in the
northwest corner of the preserve.This
habitat type occurs adjacent to scrub habitat and along some of the ponds and
streams.There is a narrow corridor of hydric
hardwood forest along a small stream connecting to RossLake.The hydric hardwood forest corridor splices
through a band of xeric oak forest
adjacent to some xeric open grassy uplands.There are also some areas of open to shrubby wetland and submergent wetland along RossLake.The Ross Lake wetland areas were surveyed
with a UV trap and/or limited diurnal survey on some dates, whereas the turkey
oak-longleaf pine savanna was more intensively surveyed with a MV sheet, UV
sheet, UV traps, rotten fruit bait, and some diurnal survey.Some other habitat types occur in the preserve
which I did not investigate for Lepidoptera, especially outside of the
northwest corner of the preserve in areas where I did not conduct any surveys.
While I
have no habitat photos specifically from the Ordway Preserve, links to
illustrated examples of the different habitat types surveyed in northern Florida by the North
American Lepidoptera Biodiversity LLC can be found at the web page Lepidoptera
Habitats of Northern Florida.There
are a variety of alternative habitat classification schemes for northern Florida, and the
aforementioned web site illustrates and explains the habitat classification
used by the NALB LLC.We have avoided
terminology that is largely unique to Florida,
such as the term “hammock.”The NALB LLC
researches Lepidoptera habitat requirements between different geographic areas,
thus we prefer terminology such as xeric oak
forest (used and understood throughout the southeast
coastal plain) over terminology such as xeric hammock (used almost exclusively
in Florida
for a habitat type which is by no means unique to Florida).
My initial
trip to the Ordway Preserve was a short night collecting trip in October 1998,
when Clay Scherer first introduced me to the preserve.At the time I conducted most of my surveys at
the Ordway Preserve (3 April 1999 to 1 April 2000) I was employed as the
Teaching Assistant for the University of Florida’s Department of Entomology and
Nematology Insect Classification Course.The Ordway Preserve was one of my favorite
sites to take my students on field trips, and much of my survey data was
obtained on field trips I conducted for my students.While my students collected a variety of
insects for their course collections, I documented as many Lepidoptera species
as possible.The preserve was less than
an hour drive from the EntomologyBuilding and provided
extensive acreage of interesting habitat quite different from that which
occurred around the University
of Florida in southwest Gainesville.This was coupled with the fact that at that
time access to the Ordway Preserve for educational and scientific insect
collecting was easy and hassle free, in contrast to some other preserves near Gainesville.Unfortunately, this site changed management
sometime in 2000 from a research friendly administration to a highly regulatory
administration.Among the many new rules
proposed initially was a requirement that before conducting any work at the
Ordway Preserve users had to sign in at a specific building in the interior of
the preserve, which could only be accessed by roads that could be very risky to
navigate with vehicles lacking four wheel drive.I circulated a formal letter recommending
that this policy be changed, and while I do not know the circumstances, this
specific requirement was later dropped.However, a proposal I submitted in 2001 to continue to conduct
Lepidoptera biodiversity research at the Ordway Preserve (assisted by a team of
some of my former students and some interested graduate students) was
rejected.The sole reason provided by
the management was that my activities were “not related to a
university-sponsored program.”This
occurred after I had already submitted two detailed reports covering my
Lepidoptera research at the Ordway Preserve.
A check list of 491 Lepidoptera species in
the included families (including 475 Macrolepidoptera
species) was published in:
Kons, Hugo L. Jr. and Robert J. Borth.2006.Contributions to a study of the diversity,
distribution, habitat association, and
phenology of the Lepidoptera of Northern Florida.North
American Journal of Lepidoptera Biodiversity.Volume I: 1-231.
This publication also includes north Florida phenology and
habitat data and analyses for north Florida Lepidoptera species (in the
included families) based on surveys conducted by Kons and/or Robert Borth at
numerous Florida
localities, including the Ordway Preserve.The detailed data from Ordway Preserve surveys was presented in two
unpublished reports provided to the Ordway management and various
Lepidopterists.These reports will be
combined into one report to be published in a future volume of the North American Journal
of Lepidoptera Biodiversity.To
receive an e-mail notification when new NAJLB volumes become available, please
contact the editor at hkonsjr@yahoo.com
Methods:Survey methods included a MV/UV sheet with a
160 watt MV light and a electric bug zapper (with a 80 watt UV light and the
zapper disabled), a UV sheet with a 22 watt DC circuline
UV light and a 15 watt DC UV light, 15 watt DC UV Traps, bait trails, diurnal
tapping, and diurnal survey with a net.Follow this
link for a more detailed discussion and illustrations of these survey
methods.A list of the locations and
dates for survey stations is presented in Table 1.All of the species on the check list are
based on specimens I personally collected on one or more of the survey dates in
the following table.
Voucher Specimens:Voucher specimens for all of the Ordway Preserve Lepidoptera
species are currently housed in my research collection in Gainesville.I have also donated some Ordway Preserve specimens to the MilwaukeePublicMuseum.
Results:A check list of 494 Lepidoptera species in the included families
that I collected at the Ordway Preserve appears at the end of this report.This list is very similar to that published
in Kons and Borth (2006).Changes or
additions to the Kons and Borth (2006) Ordway check list are noted to the right
of the species names.
Discussion:The Ordway Preserve data set has the best seasonal coverage of
any north Florida
longleaf pine-turkey oak scrub savanna locality in the Kons-Borth data
set.In recent years (2005-2007) Kons
and Robert J. Borth have conducted surveys on numerous dates at Nature
Conservancy’s Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines Preserve in Liberty County, Florida.This preserve contains early successional
longleaf pine-turkey oak scrub savanna in addition to numerous other habitat
types, but our surveys in this area have occurred only between late April and
early June, outside of the interval when a number of univoltine
scrub dependent Lepidoptera species occur (Kons and Borth 2006).We have investigated a number of other turkey
oak-longleaf pine scrub habitats at various times throughout the season with a
more limited number of survey dates.
Kons
and Borth (2006) provided habitat data and analyses which were used to derive
hypotheses of habitat dependency for many Macrolepidoptera
species that occur in northern Florida.Among the Macrolepidoptera
species recorded from the Ordway Preserve, 78.6% are hypothesized to be habitat
generalists, 2.3% are hypothesized to be dependent on hardwood forests, 2.5%
are hypothesized to be wetland dependent, and 12.5% are hypothesized to be
xeric oak-pine habitat dependent (including 8.7% that are potentially dependent
on xeric oak-pine scrub) (Kons and Borth 2006).There is some overlap between wetland dependent and hardwood forest
dependent species, because hydric hardwood forest is a type of wetland and a
type of hardwood forest.2.3% of the
Ordway Macrolepidoptera species list is comprised of
species which do not appear to be dependent on a particular habitat type, but
which are somewhat local in association with several types of specialized
habitats (these species are defined as “habitat intermedialists”
in Kons and Borth (2006)).Some of the Macrolepidoptera species recorded at the Ordway Preserve
are too poorly known to make even a preliminary hypothesis of habitat
dependency, including 1.7% of the total.The proportions of the recorded Ordway Preserve Macrolepidoptera
species with various hypothesized habitat dependencies are summarized in the
below figure.
For
all of the Kons-Borth north Florida
survey sites, including those with multiple specialized habitat types, the
majority of Macrolepidoptera species recorded for any
individual site are hypothesized to be widespread habitat generalists (Kons and
Borth 2006).Ordway species hypothesized
to be xeric oak-pine scrub dependent and wetland dependent are listed in Tables
6 and 7, respectively, in Kons and Borth (2006).
Among
the most significant discovery from my surveys of the Ordway Preserve’s scrub
habitat, discussed in Kons and Borth (2006), was the collection of a fresh
specimen of Heliothisturbatus on 31 March 2000 at 4:13am at a MV sheet.Hardwick (1996) reported that this species
was known from few specimens (all from FL), none of which had phenology or good
locality data.Hardwick (1996) suggested
this species might be extinct, and also speculated it might be a form of Heliothislupatus.Clearly the former hypothesis is not correct,
and I judge the latter to be unlikely.Heliothislupatus
appears to be a univoltine fall species in Florida, and I have
never uncovered it in turkey oak scrubs, nor have I recorded it from the Ordway
Preserve.However, I have never found H. lupatus to
be numerous with my survey methods either, so limited surveys could easily miss
it.My largest series of H. lupatus is
from second growth mesic hardwood-pine forest at the American Entomological
Institute property in Gainesville,
Florida, where no more than a few
specimens have been found per year from 2001-2007.All these specimens were consistently
collected in the fall.Specimens of H. lupatus I
have examined from southern Indiana
and eastern Texas
are very similar to those from Florida,
and the species does not appear to show significant geographic variation.Since I collected only one specimen of H. turbatus, I
don’t know if it could be found at the Ordway Preserve consistently or if I
obtained an isolated disperser from a different habitat type.However, I also have a very worn specimen
from 3 April 1999
that could possibly be another specimen of H.
turbatus.This
specimen was taken in a UV trap in scrub habitat very near where the 31 March 2000 specimen was
taken.As the 31 March 2000 specimen was in fresh
condition, it is also possible the flight season was just beginning and more
individuals could have been found a little later in the season. On the other hand, some Heliothinae
are diurnal and only occasionally come to lights, so the paucity of specimens
collected may simply be an artifact of largely ineffective survey
methodology.I conducted diurnal
searches of various species of flowers (many species of Heliothinae
may be found resting on certain species of flowers during the day) the
following day but found no additional H. turbatus.
HeliothisturbatusHeliothislupatus
One
poorly understood aspect of the management of early successional turkey
oak-longleaf pine scrub habitats is the impact of alternative active management
regimes on scrub dependent Lepidoptera species.While scrub habitats are dependent on fire to maintain them in an early
successional state, variables in fire management practices include the amount
of adjacent habitat left unburned after a controlled burn, the amount of time
areas are left unburned, the time of year burning is conducted, and the
intensity of fire during controlled burns.Kons and Borth (2006) presented some very preliminary evidence that
certain scrub dependent Lepidoptera species might be more plentiful in scrubs
which have not been burned recently, and vice versa, but much more data would
be needed before any reliable conclusions could be made.Limited data for some Ordway scrub dependent
Lepidoptera suggests they might be more numerous in either the scrub area which
lacked charring on the trees or the scrub area with charring on the trees
(these are the scrub areas in the northwest corner of the preserve noted in the
introduction), but my requests for management history information for these
areas were ignored by the new management regime that took over in 2000.
Acknowledgments:I am grateful to John Eisenberg and
Richard Franz, the former managers of the Ordway Preserve, for managing the
property as an outstanding research and educational resource accessible for
scientific and educational insect collecting.Clay Scherer first introduced me to the Ordway Preserve in October 1998.Dave
Almquist and David Zieskassisted with some of my Insect
Classification field trips to the Ordway Preserve.I thank Robert Borth for his collaboration
with our study of northern Florida Macrolepidoptera.Also, I thank David Wahl and the American
Entomological Institute for infrastructural support and lab and storage space
for Lepidoptera research from 2001 to the present.I am appreciative of James Adams and Ed
Knudson for discussions of taxonomically problematic groups of southeast U.S.
Lepidoptera.Hugo Kons Sr., Sharon Kons,
Danny McFather, and Jim Lloyd assisted with building
traps, and Danny McFather built a specimen storage
cabinet.For assistance with acquiring
chemicals important to collecting or genitalic dissections, I thank Niklaus Hostettler, Jim Lloyd, Robert Robbins, and David
Wahl.Finally, I thank Robert J. Borth
for reviewing this on line paper.
References
Hardwick, D. F.1996.A monograph to the North American Heliothentinae (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae).Privately published, Ottowa.
Hodges, Ronald W. et.
al.1983.Check List of the Lepidoptera of America North of Mexico.Great Britian,
University Press, Cambridge.
Kons, Hugo L. Jr. and Robert J. Borth.2006.Contributions to a study of the diversity,
distribution, habitat association, and
phenology of the Lepidoptera of Northern Florida.North
American Journal of Lepidoptera Biodiversity.Volume I: 1-231.
