Occurrence of moths in eastern and central Uganda Key forests

Study Extent

These data are an occurrence dataset of birds recorded from eastern and central Uganda forests including Mabira, South Busoga, Bukaleba, West Bugwe, Igwe-Luvunya, Mpigi, Mpanga and Zika forest reserves.

Sampling

Two families of moths (Sphingidae and Saturniidae) were sampled using a 125 Watt choked Mercury Vapour lamp, mounted in a “Skinner” box trap. The trap was powered by a portable generator and operated for approximately 11 hours each night between 1915 h and 0615 h. The trap is designed to retain all moths that enter it, alive, until they are sorted in the morning. Special attention was given to searching the area around the trap each morning for any moths that had been attracted to the light,but had not entered the trap and representatives of the required families were hand-collected.

Quality Control

All specimens of the families Sphingidae and Saturniidae were collected, dried and stored in paper envelopes with full data, prior to submission to the author for identification. To ensure that no representatives of the required families were inadvertently discarded, a set of photographs depicting most Ugandan species (including all genera) was provided to the moth-trap operator, and individual tuition provided on the characteristics of the families to be sampled. All specimens were examined and identified (where possible) with reference to available literature (Gaede, 1927; Rougeot, 1962; Pinhey, 1972; Carcasson, 1976; D'Abrera, 1990) and the entomological reference collections at Forest Department headquarters, Kawanda Agricultural Research Station (Kampala), the National Museums of Kenya (Nairobi), and the private collection of Dr A. McCrae (Oxford, UK). Specimens of doubtful status were retained and examined subsequently by Dr A. McCrae. The geographic coordinates of sampling locations were recorded during the original fieldwork using the Military Grid Reference System (old version). These were converted to a standard UTM format and then to decimal latitude and longitude using GIS based tools.

Method steps

1. The national survey of Uganda forests collected data in 65 forests. The original field survey results including all data were published in a series of reports by the Forest Department of Uganda (Howard et al. 1996). The location data in the original reports were provided in Military Grid Reference System. These were first converted to standard UTM coordinates, noting that the MGRS was using an old datum (MGRS-AL scheme also called "MGRS old"). UTM coordinates were then converted to decimal degrees using an online conversion spreadsheet (https://giscrack.com/download-excel-template-convert-geographic-coordinates-utm/). The converted locations were then checked against Google Maps imagery to confirm that a satisfactory conversion had been made.

A total of 9794 moth occurrences were recorded. Of these, 9,333 were identified to species level and 461 were identified to genus level.

1. Imrasia
   rank: genus
2. Pseudaphelia
   rank: genus
3. Goodia
   rank: genus
4. Orthogonioptilum
   rank: genus
5. Hippotion osiris
   rank: species
6. Basiothia medea
   rank: species
7. Deilephila nerii
   rank: species

The data was collected from West Bugwe and Igwe-Luvunya, plus South Busoga, , Mabira, Mpigi Mpanga, and Kisubi forest reserves.