---

This page gives help on navigating through the guide and the various sections of the species accounts.

Contents

• Navigating through the guide
• Searching for species or text
• Species Accounts
• Distribution maps
• Flight period tables
• Life history charts
• Identification
• Species comparison
• Preferences
• Species filtering

Navigating through the guide

The top of each page will have in the middle the title 'The Moths of Suffolk', clicking on this will cause the introductory page of the guide to be displayed.

The menu at the side of the pages contains links that allow navigation between the various sections of the guide. Items in the menu will vary depending on the type of page being viewed, as appropriate.

Help	Link to the Help page (this page).
Search	Link to the Search page.
Compare	Link to the Compare page. Further details below
Comment book	Link to the comment book.
Preferences	Link to Preferences page.
Filtering	Link to Species filtering page.
Browse pictures	Link to the Browse photographs pages.
Printable	Click to open new window showing a printer friendly version of the current account page.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]	Provides a text field into which species names, partial names or Bradley and Fletcher numbers can be entered to search for species accounts without accessing the search page.
Recently viewed	Lists and allows access to recently viewed species accounts (if any)
First, Previous or Next	Navigate between the account pages

Searching for species or text

The Search page provides facilities for accessing the various species accounts via

• various species lists, ordered by vernacular or scientific names or Bradley and Fletcher number.
• ability to search for accounts by species names or partial name
• ability to search for matching text in species accounts
  

When entering names of moths to search for scientific or vernacular names or Bradley and Fletcher numbers can be used. Complete names do not need to be provided and if there are several species that match the entered partial name then a list of match names is shown. The five letter acronyms made up of the first two letters of the genus and the first three letters of the specific name are also accepted (e.g. for Noctua pronuba, Large Yellow Underwing an acronym of 'nopro' can be entered to access this species).

When searching for text in the species accounts simply enter the words that you want to search for, separated by spaces. This is a relatively simple search facility at the moment.

Species Accounts

The species accounts are arranged into standard sections under the navigation section of the page. The first section shows the Bradley and Fletcher number and species name. Sections below this one provide information about the species.

The next section (species account section) is divided into left and right areas. The left side provides textual information on the species whereas the area on the right shows (where available) a photograph of the adult, a distribution map for the county, a flight period table and life history chart.

After the species account section there may be a number of optional sections. These will cover identification and additional photographs related to this species and these sections are covered later on in this page.

Species Account Text

The textual section of the species account contains some standard headings. These are largely self explanatory but some require further description. Information provided within the accounts generally relates to observations of the moth in Suffolk. Where information is sparse on a species in the county this will relate to the species on a national basis and in this case the text will be italicised.

• Local Status - specifies whether the species is deemed resident in the county or a vagrant/immigrant. Also listed here is the SMP Status (Suffolk Moth Panel status) that indicates to local recorders the degree of supporting evidence required for confirmation of records of this species. For further details on the SMP Status see the SMG Checklist pages.
• Distribution and abundance - details how widespread or not the species is in the county and an assessment of how common the species is where found.
• Final Catalogue. This refers to Claude Morley's Final Catalogue of the Lepidoptera of Suffolk, published in 1937 by the Suffolk Naturalists' Society. This catalogue consisted of mainly short accounts for each species of lepidoptera that had been recorded in the county at that time. Interpreting the accounts can be a bit tricky as the scientific names used have changed significantly since Morley's time. In addition Morley also appears to have mistakenly included records from the odd Norfolk site lying near the Suffolk-Norfolk border. In this section italicised text indicates comments by myself unless it is a scientific name that has been italicised.
  
• Aston's Additions. This list produced by Alasdair Aston covered those species new to the county between the period of Morley's Final Catalogue in 1937 and 1960.
  

Distribution Maps

These show the recorded distribution of the moth in the county using 10km dot maps. Historical information from Morley and some other literature sources is included. As Morley only used location names it can sometimes be tricky to convert a location to a grid reference for plotting on a map. A smaller dot on the map indicates only pre-1980 records, while a larger dot indicates the species has been recorded after 1980.

Flight period charts

This shows the percentage of the peak monthly abundance of a species occurring in each month. The month where the moth is most abundant will always be shown as 100%. Occurences in other months will be shown as a percentage of the abundance in the peak month. For example if 3 individuals of a moth species have been recorded, 2 in May and 1 in June. Then the abundance percentage for May will be 100% as that is the month in which most individuals have been recorded. The abundance for June is 50% as 1 is half of 2.

The table below shows the mapping of the various percentage abundance values to coloured rectangles

Percentage of peak abundance in month	0%	1-5%	6-10%	11-30%	31-50%	51-70%	71-90	91-100%
Colour in flight period table cell for that month

Flight period charts may be missing for some species if not enough records carry sufficiently detailed date information.

Life history charts

Life history charts show what lifecycle stage a species may be expected to be in for each month of the year, where this is known. Under each month there may be various coloured horizontal bars indicating the expected stage(s) for that month. The following lists the colours associated with each lifecycle stage.

•      - egg or ova
•      - larva
•      - larva in diapause
•      - pupa or chrysalis
•      - adult
•      - aestivating adult (summer hibernation)

Some species have lifecycles lasting more than one year. For these species more than one row of coloured bars will be displayed, with each row being separated by a dashed line to separate the different years.

Other species may have different lifecycles depending on the subspecies. Where this data is present there will be more than one row in the life history chart, divided by a horizontal black line with the related subspecies name at the start of the row.

Identification

This section aims to give help on identification of species.

If the species can be confused with others then a list of the possible confusion species will be listed. Entries in this list that have species accounts in the guide will have direct links to the account. Below this section are some buttons that allow a page to be displayed showing comparisons between various features of the confusion species. Currently these include the ability to compare adult photographs, Suffolk distribution maps, flight periods, life history charts and account text.

Species comparison

This facility allows various species to be selected and comparisons made between the selected species. The features that can be compared at the moment are adult photographs, distribution maps, flight period tables, life history charts and account text.

The form should be relatively straightforward to use.

• select the order you would like the species to be shown in from the 'Order by' drop-down list
• select the feature to compare from the 'Type' drop-down list
• tick the boxes of the species that you want to compare from the long list
• click on 'Compare selected species' button

Clicking the 'Reset' button will clear any selected species.

Preferences

This facility allows viewers of the guide to control certain aspects of how the guide is displayed. Use of this feature will require the setting of a cookie in the browser.

Species Filtering

This facility allows the species shown in the guide to be restricted based on various filters. For example, it could be that you are only interested in viewing species that are on the wing at the moment. Switching on this filter will then limit the species listed in the search and comparison facilities to those that are on the wing at the moment. This filtering is also applied when navigating between species account pages. Use of this feature will require the setting of a cookie in the browser.