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Mount Diablo Day Flying Moths

Some Day Flying Moths at Mount Diablo, California, Contra Costa County
Compiled by J. A. Powell
February 2015

The following list of species no doubt is incomplete because State Park policy prevented collecting of insects for many decades. The preliminary list includes some specimen records in the Essig Museum, U. California, Berkeley (EME), and others I suspect will be found when a more comprehensive survey is carried out. Most of the confirmed specimen records to date originate from Russelmann Park and Mitchell Canyon, which were operated as commercial parks in the 1950s-1960s, and from several sites listed only by elevation (1800’, 2000’ etc. presumably along the paved road), collected by C. I. Smith in the late 1940s, prior to his untimely death in 1950. Probably numerous other diurnal Mount Diablo moths have been deposited in the California Academy of Sciences (CAS) or have been observed but not collected. I have not searched Kelly’s CA Moths counties list, which may be a source for additional records on Mount Diablo.

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