We've hit the 5,000 species milestone! Thanks to all of you for contributing over 50,000 observations (!) to this project, which has now documented over 5,000 species (!!) of organisms attracted to the lights on our structures! Using such lighting allows for a passive and rather incidental method for documenting the diversity of species using the places where we live, work and play.
While drawn to our lights, these species are often pulled away from providing some of the essential ecosystem services that they’ve evolved to do, including as critical pollinators, decomposers, nutrient cyclers, as well as being vital parts of your local food webs. As such, and whenever possible without compromising your own safety, please remember to turn off your lighting for as much of the night as you can, helping to reduce light pollution and facilitating access to dark skies and starry, starry nights!
Thanks again for your observations!
Be the light…
Stan

Even though Project PorchLight is more than just about moths, moths do make up the vast majority of the observations. Be sure to join the official NMW project here on iNat so your observations contribute to both efforts! Here's the link: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/national-moth-week-2023
And for those that are interested, I am creeping up on 350 species of Leps here at my house in Maine, with all but about 10 being moths - such an incredible celebration of biodiversity! Thanks to all of you who help with the identifications and confirmations- so much appreciated!
Be the light...
Stan

I’m looking forward to launching into National Moth Week this evening with the hopes of hitting 200 species of moths just around my two porchlights—and all but 6 have been since April! We moved up to Fryeburg, Maine last fall, and have been pleasantly surprised by the abundance and variety of native species. That said, just a couple hundred meters from my house, the deciduous trees have been devastated by this year’s plague of spongy moths. And farther away, entire hillsides have been denuded. Let’s not let spongy moth infestations give moths a bad rap. This is our week to celebrate the diversity of native moths and all the vital ecosystems services they provide!

And for those not in the U.S., let’s consider making this International Moth Week!
https://nationalmothweek.org/

Stan

Thank you all for your contributions to the project!
Stan (srullman)

https://blog.nature.org/science/2020/08/24/a-field-guide-to-finding-cool-moths/

Hi Project PorchLight contributors!
As tired as I'm sure we all are of seeing graphs depicting ever-increasing bad news metrics, be they COVID-19 cases, record-breaking heat waves, or number of Zoom meetings we've participated in since March, we will be hitting a major milestone in terms of total observations contributed by you all just in time to kick off National Moth Week in the U.S. While I can't figure out how to get the graph into this post, the increasing curve is a familiar one, so I'll just focus on that target of 10,000 observations (and then on to 15,000)!
As we approach this milestone and the midpoint of this "summer of stuckness", and as we celebrate the diversity of species drawn to our lights, please remember to turn off those lights as safety allows so those critters can get back to providing all the vital ecosystem services we rely upon, and so that they can find the food or mates that can help them survive into the future!
Thanks, as always, for your observations!
Be well and Shine On!
Stan

Not too long after my previous note in September, announcing our collective PorchLighters' observations creeping up on the 1,000 species mark, I took a peek at the count and we were deep into the 1,200's. Not even a chance to pop a cork to celebrate the Millennial Species Count before it was, as they say, old news. A special "hats off" to (or perhaps, given the context, let's shine a light on) jollygoodyellow (https://www.inaturalist.org/people/jollygoodyellow) for her observations lifting us up and well-over that "millestone" (Latin pun, not typo).

As of today (14 November, 2019), we have 6,230 observations tagged to Project PorchLight (thanks, mercí, gracias, obrigado, zikomo, תודה! to all of you for your contributions!). 2,717 of those are considered "Research Grade" (which is pretty amazing, I have to say). But that also means that even more- 3,506, in fact- are still in need of identification, so please reach out to people within your respective networks or colleagues that might be able to spend some of their northern hemisphere "downtime" helping identify those observations still needing ID'd so your observations are able to be considered "Research Grade", shunted over to the GBIF database to contribute a bit more directly to science and conservation.
Shine on!
Stan

Diversity is slowing down as evening temperatures drop here where I live in New England, so I'm relying on those further south to push us up and over the 1,000 species mark! I suspect we may already be there, so let's try to recruit some good identifiers to review and verify our observations to Research Grade status.
Stan

Spring is finally (and quite literally) in the air! Here in New England, we are finally emerging from what felt like a long and rather weird winter. No huge snowfalls, but wildly oscillating precipitation and temperatures made for layers of snow and ice and frozen ground, and the last gray pile of a mix of all three of those on the edge of our driveway is finally melting away.
We appreciate all the porch light observations submitted from warmer climes, and are finally looking forward to adding some more observations from the Northeast (though keep the global contributions coming!). Most valuable are observations from urban (or urbanizing) areas, so please check out those lights on your way in and out of your respective abodes. And as Tom Bodett says in that hotel ad “we’ll leave the light on for you.”

Dear Project PorchLighters,
As we creep up on the longest Northern Hemisphere night of the year (or put another way, the longest porchlight sampling period!), I have been getting a couple of what are likely Winter Moths (Operophtera brumata) visiting my back porch in Hamilton, Massachusetts these last several weeks- https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&taxon_id=60780. This species is an invasive species from Europe and a species in which the caterpillars can do a lot of leaf damage to trees and blueberry bushes in particular. No great numbers around my light to date, which may hopefully be explained by the biological control methods that have been employed in New England to reduce the ecological and agricultural impact of these pests:
https://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2018/09/umass_amherst_scientists_claim.html

http://www.wbur.org/news/2018/02/26/winter-moths-record-low-population

With that, monitoring locations where these control strategies may still be needed is important, so even though many of us in New England will not likely see a moth for the next several months, please do keep checking those porchlights for their presence. Also know that the Bruce Spanworm Moth (Operophtera bruceata)—a species native to North America and congenitor (same genus- Operophtera) to the Winter Moth-https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&taxon_id=121236 — may also emerge during this time period, and they are very similar in appearance to each other (certainly beyond my identification skills), thus most of my observations are just at the genus level. The more you know, the more that you realize how much you don't know! That said, there are researchers who are interested in both species, so any observations you can provide are valuable (particularly with good photos).

More information on Winter Moths can be found here:
https://massnrc.org/pests/pestFAQsheets/winter%20moth.html

https://bugguide.net/node/view/247161

https://ag.umass.edu/landscape/fact-sheets/winter-moth-identification-management

https://www.massaudubon.org/learn/nature-wildlife/insects-arachnids/nuisance-moths/winter-moths

In lightness...
Stan