A big congratulations to Barbara Mulligan who has discovered a new moth in Walpole Park Ealing. The moth was caught in her moth trap, and was later confirmed by the Natural History Museum as a species currently unknown to science. The moth has been named Tachystola mulliganae in her honour.
Ms Mulligan has been a lifelong moth enthusiast, and has been catching and breeding the animals since she was 10 years old. The BBC has reported the story here, and more information is available at the Natural History Museum here.
The National History Museum has the following to say about the discovery.
A new species of moth to science has been discovered in Ealing, London, by an amateur moth collector. An undescribed moth which had been sitting in the Natural History Museum’s collections, since being collected in 1886 from Western Australia, was a vital piece of the puzzle in establishing that the species had not been recognised by science until now.
Highlighting the vital role of citizen science – where members of the public are actively engaged with nature and report scientific sightings or findings from their local environment – Barbara Mulligan is the only person in the UK to have found the new species around her local area of west London.
