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BELLINGHAM – Merrill Peterson, professor of Biology at Western Washington University, along with collaborators from across the region, today launched , a website featuring ultra- high-resolution photographs of more than 1,200 moth species, along with detailed descriptions and distribution maps.

Researchers say the new site may be the most comprehensive guide to any region’s moths anywhere in the world.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, via the National Science Foundation (NSF), funded the three-year effort with grants to Peterson, and to Richard Zack at Washington State University’s M.T. James Entomological Collection and Dr. Lars Crabo, a radiologist at Bellingham’s Mount Baker Imaging and internationally recognized expert on moths.

“It’s been a huge, international effort involving undergraduates at Western, professional scientists, serious amateur collectors, and moth photographers across the country and into Canada,” said Peterson, who oversaw the project. “Getting photographs of all of the species was a challenge, since some are so rare that they’re known from only a single specimen, and others were only discovered to have been in the Northwest in the last couple of months.”

The moth photos are of such high-resolution that they can be zoomed in on to show even the wing scales that create color and wing pattern and which can measure less than 1/100th of an inch.

Jon Shepard and Paul Hammond, associates of the Oregon State Arthropod Collection at Oregon State University, who have been studying the region’s moths for decades, were also major contributors.  Scientists at institutions including the University of Idaho, Canadian National Collection, Oregon Department of Agriculture and Washington Department of Agriculture, also contributed to the project.  Moth specimens in the insect collections at these and other institutions, as well as private collections, were the source of data for the site’s distribution maps, with some specimens dating back to the late 1800s.

“We made it a priority to have the site be useful for anyone,” Peterson said. “There is even an interactive identification key to help people figure out what moth species they’ve found.”

Peterson and colleagues created the site to aid scientific research, but also to foster interest in the general public. That is why they launched today, in time for , July 23-29.

This photo of Platyprepia virginalis, the Ranchman’s Tiger Moth, is one of 1,200-plus available on the website Pacific Northwest Moths. Photo courtesy of Merrill Peterson, ��������