Mucking the Stalls: An Interview with Laura Gaudette
That’s right, more caterpillar content!
For the past two springs, a few of us here at iNat - myself, Ken-ichi Ueda, and iNat Board member Cat Chang, as well as some other California naturalists - have had the privilege of joining University of Connecticut professor Dave Wagner and other researchers from the California Academy of Sciences and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History as they searched the deserts of the American southwest for caterpillars. Prof. Wagner is the author of Caterpillars of Eastern North America and for years has been working on a companion volume that covers the western half of the continent.
As Elizabeth Kolbert writes in her profile of Prof. Wagner, he likes to travel with a bunch of helpers and he’s enlisted Laura Gaudette (@gaudettelaura), a collections volunteer with the University of Florida’s McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity, for some of these trips. It was amazing to watch her and all the other researchers stay up late into the night documenting and organizing their finds.
Laura’s a long-time iNatter, and was gracious enough to sit down with me for a chat and discuss her use of iNat and the work this group is doing. I hope you enjoy!
- if you're not a specialist but want to help get observations in front of those who are, you can use the Identify tool to refine observations!
- and you can also use the Identify page to annotate observations, such as labeling lepidoptera observations as adults, caterpillars, pupae, or eggs. Here's a search for all lepidoptera that are missing a Life Stage annotation.
Comments
Great stuff!
Sounds like the dream retirement - truly! I just started with LED UV light mothing and it's a really great hobby. Easy to set up, portable, and I've seen some really incredible insects. And, as always, the wonderful folks here on iNat teach me so much through their kind contribution of time and expertise.
Great interview!
Really cool.. a lot of Lepidoptera can get a finder ID quickly, but those caterpillars might sit there forever. I love that some IDers are deticated to deal with them.. and thanks for the reminder that annotations might be very usefull in cases like this.. I should work through my leps and annotate them.. maybe some can get in front of the right set of eyes this way
What a wonderful interview :) !
Wonder interview, Laura is an amazing naturalist!!
Very cool story!
Really nice! Laura certainly combines her insatiable curiosity with keen observations, excellent photography, and scientific zeal. And INat is the perfect venue!
Great interview, @gaudettelaura
lovely interview, great to learn about your studies Laura!
And I annotated 120 lep observations while watching :)
@gaudettelaura Wonderful interview! Your passion and research is inspiring!
Keep up the great work!
@gaudettelaura, Great inspirational interview!!!
And thanks for getting me hooked with your ID of my first Golden Borer Moth!
@gaudettelaura is my hero! ❤️
Great interview with a wonderful iNatter!
Excellent video! Great to see this monumental effort documented so well. I was fortunate to be able to join this group on the 2024 trip. It was extremely inspiring to see this team dedicating so much energy toward the shared goal of detailing the few remaining unknown natural histories of Western macromoths.
Yayyyyyyy Laura! Soooo Cool!
So cool Laura! We miss you here in Vermont!
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