Moth records continue to fall

A Toadflax Brocade (Calophasia lunula) turned up in the moth trap yesterday. It was a very worn specimen, but I suspect it's come a long way. Although they've been turning up in small numbers in VC55 for the past two years I suspect this is a migrant rather than a local. Which set me thinking (on a wet day) about the County moth records.

All VC55 moth records (>68k) (to end 2018) (all data copyright Leicestershire and Rutland Environmental Records Centre, data series to end 2018):


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I can break this down to look at VC55 moth families:


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With over 68,000 records, this is approaching big data, so - heatmap of all VC55 moth records:


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From the heatmap, the contributions of individual (groups of) moth recorders can be seen - as well as the remaining gaps in coverage. However, at least two of the islands point to the traditional VC55 honeypots of Charnwood and Rutland Water.


Acknowledgements:

• All data Copyright Leicestershire and Rutland Environmental Records Centre.
• Data visualization performed using the R platform, v. 3.6.1 (R Core Team (2014) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. http://www.R-project.org).
• J. Cann for assistance with data visualization.