izeltlabuak.hu contribution to the European Moth Nights 2023 event
About the European Moth Nights event
European Moth Nights 2023 was a special opportunity for izeltlabuak.hu to join an event that brings together moth enthusiasts. This event provided a unique opportunity for those interested in moths to share their passion and collectively study these mysterious creatures.
The izeltlabuak.hu website primarily focuses on arthropods found in Hungary. This entry also deals with Hungarian fauna.
The event organizer is the Lepidoptera Mundi website and the University of Lodz set the event period for 2023 to June 15-19. During this period, the organizers held joint moth observations across Europe to collect and share the recorded observation data with the community. The event also has Hungarian connections. It was originally created from the idea and organization of Dr. László Rézbányai, who was the initiator together with Mihály Kádár in Debrecen. László handed over EMN organization in 2019 and currently works as Switzerland's EMN ambassador for the success of the event. The original goal of the event was to coordinate moth enthusiasts, purposefully boost national research, and draw attention to moths and their research.
Our contribution
In agreement with the goals, izeltlabuak.hu issued a call for joint moth observations during the event period. We shared this call in Facebook posts and on our website, which resulted in numerous observations being recorded during the event.
As a community data sharing website, izeltlabuak.hu provides an opportunity for observers to record their observations on the web interface and share them with the community. As a community, we can support each other in learning about arthropods, including moths. The more we learn about them, the more effectively we can act in their protection.
The European Moth Nights 2023 event was specifically limited to observing moths. The organizers doesn't count micro-moths in this group.
The izeltlabuak.hu website is free and open to everyone. Anyone can easily and quickly record observations by providing information about the observed animals. In addition to selecting one or more photos and marking the location on the map, optional data can be provided, such as count, notes, observation group classification, or observer names. In addition, a suggested identification can be provided, but it is not mandatory. Identifications are made by experienced identifiers working with the website. Recording can be done from a desktop computer or mobile phone by opening it in a browser. Observers perform citizen science work, thousands of users provide useful information sources for scientific work.
The data recording functions and huge user base of izeltlabuak.hu provided an ideal opportunity to participate in the event. On our website, you can browse macro-moths and micro-moths. The number of macro-moth observations recorded on the izeltlabuak.hu interface at the time of writing approaches 200,000, and micro-moth observations reach 35,000. They show particularly great interest among users. This year, all moth observations during the event period participated in the program.
This is not izeltlabuak.hu's first contribution to the event series. We also participated in 2018 and provided the data together with previous 2017 and 2016 observations. From 2019 to 2022, cooperation was suspended due to lack of time. I hope that from 2023 onwards, our participation will become regular.
Results
We created a separate subpage for moths recorded during the European Moth Nights 2023 period so that they can be publicly reviewed. The organizers expected moth adult data, specifically those that were identified to species. In addition, it was required that the observer and identifier appear with full names and, if possible, the collection method should also be provided. The izeltlabuak.hu European Moth Nights 2023 observation summary page currently contains 1480 observations, which include moths not identified to species and observations recorded by users with only usernames. Due to the conditions, only a smaller subset of this was forwarded. From Hungary, we provided 83 locations, 74 users and 282 species with a total of 1050 observation data to the organizers, which were processed and are available on their website. It is particularly noteworthy that in addition to Hungarian data, we also provided 93 observation data of 63 different species recorded in Romania by Balogh Botond and Kárpáti Marcell, which were also recorded.
Rarer species were also observed. Outstanding observations:
European contributions on the organizers' website
Connection to other events
izeltlabuak.hu is closely connected to another similar event. We wrote a summary about the National Moth Week 2023 event in our blog post.
Acknowledgments
Finally, we would like to express our deep gratitude to the event organizers and all participating data recorders, with whom we collaborated to make it possible to share our passion for moths. Special thanks go to Tóth Balázs and Balogh Botond, who put a lot of work into identifying the observations. We thank everyone who participated in the European Moth Nights 2023 event and helped us learn about the world of moths!
