To the Dark Side:
Documenting Iowa’s Insects One Night at a Time
story and photos contributed by Jim Durbin
The author documents insects attracted to lights during a night session at Indian Creek Nature Center in Cedar Rapids.
Iowa’s insects have become a life’s work for Jim Durbin, whose collecting, photographing, and documenting eventually grew into Iowanaturemapper.org, a public database built to share the records he has gathered over decades. What began as a personal effort to better understand moths and other insects has become a resource with thousands of species records, photographs, and tools for identifying what turns up in the field.
My interest in the natural world started early. I was always outside while growing up, with trips to my cousins’ place, where they had 100 acres of woods and fields. We would spend the days in the woods until we heard the car horn that told us it was time to head home. I also did some hunting, which was another way to be outside and pay attention to what was around me.
After high school, I attended a technical school for electronics in Louisville, Kentucky. I was hired by Collins Radio in February of 1966 and worked there until April of 2006, when I retired. Over those years, I held five different positions. In 1974, I moved to the airport facility, where I spent the rest of my career as an installation tech, systems installation engineer, and, for the final thirteen years, one of the managers.
My life as a nature enthusiast grew more serious in 1989, when I joined Cedar Rapids Audubon and started birding more intensely. At first, it was the kind of birding many people begin with—watching what comes to the backyard. Then we started going to parks, then traveling around different parts of Iowa, and eventually taking trips farther away. One of the most memorable was a trip to Arizona in the early 1990s. About 10 of us spent nearly 12 days there, birding from dawn until after dark. We had planned to slow down in the middle of the day, but it never got hot enough to do that, so we kept going. We came home worn out, but that is part of the fun. You never know what you are going to see, and nature always has a different plan.
Indigo Bunting, Passerina cyanea. Marion, Iowa.
Photo by Jim Durbin
In the next few years, I moved into looking for, photographing, and documenting butterflies, dragonflies, and a few other insects. In 1992, I attended a night session led by Frank Olsen on spotting sphinx moths. While talking with Frank, I learned he was putting up a sheet with lights and collecting moths. I thought that sounded cool, so I decided to go to the dark side. I still do night lighting today.
I like doing night sessions because you can gather a lot of data fairly quickly. Everything comes to you, and you don't have to walk around in the daytime trying to find it.
Over time, my collection grew to about 18,000 specimens stored in 150 Cornell drawers. My hope is to donate that collection to the University of Iowa Natural History Museum.
The author’s insect collection is catalogued and curated in 150 Cornell drawers.
My methods have changed over the years. I used to rely more on the sheet, light bucket traps, collecting specimens, pinning them, and storing them. Now I mostly take photographs. Digital cameras make it much easier to document species without the time and space needed for specimen storage. The photographs serve as documentation, and I do not have to collect common species just to record them. On a busy summer night, I might document 300 specimens and collect only 10. That gives a better idea of what is being seen.
The website grew out of that same habit of documentation. I currently run Iowanaturemapper.org along with a few other sites that link to the database. While the site is primarily for Iowa insects, I have included records from other states as well. In 2012, I met Don F. Becker, who offered to build a database website to make my information public. It took until 2014 to upload all the data and photographs, and that became the current site. Since then, it has changed a lot, with new ways to load and check data and photos, plus graphs, maps, and reports that help make sense of everything.
Argyrotaenia velutinana
Udea rubigalis
Halysidota tessellaris-harrisii
Callima argenticinctella
Raphia frater
Hellinsia kellicottii
Eudryas grata
Coleophora trifolii
Blepharidopterus provancheri
Tenomerga cinerea
Pediopsoides distinctus
Haploa lecontei
Just a few of the many insects photographed by the author at the Wapsi River Environmental Center BioBlitz in Scott County, June 2026. BioBlitz events bring volunteers and scientists together to document as many species as possible in 24 hours. Readers can view these and additional specimens photographed at the event here.
In 2018, an identification program was added and is updated once a year as I acquire more photographs and new species are added. It is intended to help people identify photographs of insects and other species. The program is trained on the photographs of all the species on the website, and it now includes more than 10,000 species. Its accuracy depends on how many photos it has to train on. Some uncommon species only have a few photos and are harder to identify, but the program will generally get you to at least the genus level.
A typical collection night starts with permission. I work with county conservation staff, state park rangers, and others, and I also have a state permit to collect and document. When I get to a site around sundown, I set up my equipment and wait until dark, when the insects begin to come in. I photograph most everything that shows up, usually taking three or four photos to make sure I get a sharp one. I generally stay until 11 or 12 at night, then head home.
The next day, I move the photographs to the computer, rename them with the date and location, add GPS coordinates, and run them through the identification program. After checking the identifications against other sites, I upload the photos and bulk-create the records. Then, in a couple of days, I do it all again.
I'm not the only one who adds to the records. The site allows people to submit data directly, and many do. Over the years, some people have sent just one record, while others have contributed thousands. I also download Iowa records from Ecdysis, BugGuide, Moth Photographers Group, and iNaturalist to add to the database. I find it amazing that people want to share their sightings and data.
The author leads a field trip at Big Sand Mound in southeastern Iowa.
One of the most enjoyable parts of the work is when other people join in and see how much fun it is to watch what comes to the lights. I have had scouts come out, and sometimes a park ranger or deputy sheriff stops by, wondering what I am doing. I also do sessions at parks for moth nights, insect programs, and BioBlitzes. At one place, college students doing herpetology studies sometimes join in, and they think it is cool to see all the insects that show up. It is also rewarding to work in groups with people from other disciplines and share data back and forth.
It’s gratifying to see this work continue in my own family. My daughter, Anita Durbin Westphal, serves as Assistant Curator of the Christina Reiman Butterfly Wing at Reiman Gardens in Ames, and my granddaughter, Reid Durbin, is Insect Project Manager at the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History.
Jim and his granddaughter, Reid Durbin, at a
night lighting session in Palisades-Kepler State Park.
If I had to name a legacy, I would hope people remember me as the guy who started with the goal of documenting moth species in Iowa and ended up collecting thousands of records and documenting thousands of insect species across the state. Even with all the agriculture here, there is still so much in our parks, wetlands, and green belts that helps protect what Iowa is and was. I hope people keep visiting those places, looking closely, taking pictures, and sharing what they find.