Citizen Science: Celebrate Moths, Bring Back the Night

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Citizen Science: Celebrate Moths, Bring Back the Night Post. The public enjoys a TMN Gulf Coast Chapter Moth Night at Exploration Green 2022 (Photo credit: Brian Schrock)

Reconnecting with the Night

The circadian rhythm that results with the regular rotation of the Earth is important to many of its creatures – including us. When the nighttime comes, we can learn to embrace it as part of our daily lives and coexist with all the other species that need the night to thrive.

A third of vertebrate animals (those with a backbone) have evolved to find their mates and food in complete absence of light. Bobcats, bats, opossum, raccoon all live their lives in relative darkness. But more than half of all invertebrates (like moths and beetles) need the darkness for survival.

Where have the fireflies gone? City dwellers regale happy stories of catching them temporarily in jars as children each summer, using them to light their way at night. Today, fireflies are in steady decline not just due to the destruction of their life cycle habitat but for the artificial illumination of once-dark spaces. When bioluminescence is the attraction mechanism of a short-lived adult life, couples can no longer easily find one another. Simply put, we have carefully selected fireflies out of our newly housed, artificially lit urban ecosystem.

Master Naturalists want to help nocturnal wildlife and will do what they can to bring back the night on their own properties. Even as they strive to keep the nighttime night by turning off landscape lighting dusk to dawn, they cannot out-dark neighbors who continue to light up homes right across the street. Like sound waves and foul chemicals wafting through the air, photons of light rarely stay where intended. Light trespasses. Wildlife needs every one of us to engage.

What happens to us then as we alter the age-old regularity of day and night? Through millions of years of circadian cycles of daytime followed by night and repeat, the hormone Melatonin naturally and regularly releases in animals to help regulate that sleep-wake cycle. Nocturnal or diurnal animals, plants, even bacteria share this natural compound. Without these cycles dictated by Earth’s rhythms, humans will also suffer.

Darkness helps regulate sleep patterns in humans and provides migration, feeding, and mating cues for wildlife. Even trees depend on the length of the day to guide the timing of leaf molt. Cycles of light and dark have determined the rhythms of life since life began.

The International Dark-Sky Association, darksky.org
Images of Moth Night events including Master Naturalists with children observing moths and a variety of colorful moths
Images of Moth Night events including Master Naturalists with children observing moths and a variety of colorful moth species (Collage and photos by Shannon Westveer; Photo of Shannon top right by Chuck Snyder, TMN Galveston Bay Chapter)

Citizen Science and Logging Moth Species

One of the most rewarding services that Master Naturalists provide is citizen science. As our co-sponsors’ “boots on the ground,” we are a natural volunteer extension deep within Texas communities where few professionals can easily or frequently visit. We count birds, survey plants, test soil and water, even log rainfall and hail events. These data are pushed up digitally to a variety of worldwide database collections, helping scientists, professionals, and researchers better document the state of our natural resources here in Texas. In the dog days of summer, we use the the coolness of night to log members of the same order of insects as our beloved daytime butterflies: moths are the oldest and original members of Lepidoptera.

July is National Moth Month! Join members of TMNCPC who host or co-host bioblitz public events after dark. Bring your families along with your curiosity to have fun with us as we survey “the nighttime butterflies” for this short period of time. Our neighbors need the night just like we do. Let’s reconnect with them while they’re here.

Master Naturalists conduct a moth survey at Russ Pitman Park in Bellaire, Texas with Sam Kieschnick 2022
Moth survey at Russ Pitman Park in Bellaire, Texas with Sam Kieschnick 2022 (Photo by Shannon Westveer)

Houston-area Moth Night Events July 2023

About the Header Image

Brian Schrock, Texas Master Naturalist Gulf Coast Chapter, captures the crepuscular hour just before dusk at a Moth Night event at Exploration Green in Clear Lake, Texas. These events are regular through the summertime, always free, fun, and open to all members of the family.

Learn More about Moths and Citizen Science