does anyone have specimens of galanthis from Guyana and/or Surinam ? i am compiling images of galanthis from countries adjacent to Trinidad for comparison. i believe Trinidad galanthis should be treated as a seperate ssp. Michel Dottax agrees.

Back to the subject I do remember seeing O.priamus in Niagara Falls butterfly house. It is not really in US but just across the river. I had pleasure to meet Chuck there few years ago.

It is also disappointing to travel to tropical forests and find out that the number of encounter butterflies ( per square area ) is much lower than in visited previously butterfly house.

Butterfly houses always give me a mild case of vertigo. It unsettles me to see Neotropical and SE Asian species flying together!

jh

I have a lovely copy for sale, if interested pm me

Hi,

I'm a Chemical Engineering PhD student currently studying Hydrogen production from Termites (naturally, they're not harmed at all), and would like to share a video on the topic which also documents my journey up to this point.




Regards

Thanks to all for your input. The trap pictured is constructed somewhat differently from mine, which doesn't have so wide a gap between the bait tray platform and net.

Cabintom wrote: Fri Mar 21, 2025 8:08 am About a month ago I had to urgently relocate away from Bunia. I was able to charter a Cessna Caravan out, but it was filled with our team members and other colleagues, so non-essential belongings were left behind. My collection sits there as we wait to see what will happen .

Sorry you had to depart, but I've been there and done that. Having a bag ready to go is an old method to save the most important, because there's often no warning- just grab and go.

Historically, I'd kept my collection to a 100 drawer maximum, and any excess was sent off, but I got lazy and sloppy (frankly, free time is somehow less than ever- how can that be?)

About 1/3 of it is being picked up by a well known retailer today. About 1/2 is being picked up by Cornell next week. I'll retain about 24 drawers, of which (I am PRAYING) some will be empty for future use.

This plan, I hope, satisfies several concerns: (1) it keeps me in the game, (2) it disperses my collection so that one event won't destroy my legacy, and (3) collectors like some folks here have the opportunity to get hard-to-find specimens.

Glad to hear you are safe Thomas. I thought a lot about you with the recent events.
Hope you will be able to go back to Bunia soon and that your unique collection is safe. As you said, it's part of the life there...

Gilles Seraphin has just published an impressive monography about Agrias butterflies.

The work of a life ! 400 pages, an impressive historical research combined with modern genetic analysis. And a cooperation with several major entomologists and Agrias collectors (especially JP Joubert).
I have just received the book and it already answers some questions I had about rare specimens with dubious status in my collection.

A real bible !
The book is unfortunately in French, with English abstracts for each chapter and a lot of plates with latin names. But all serious Agrias collectors should buy it.

For sale by Antenor (a French entomological association).
Price : 120€ + shipping
Order it at Antenor : antenor.tls@orange.fr

About a month ago I had to urgently relocate away from Bunia. I was able to charter a Cessna Caravan out, but it was filled with our team members and other colleagues, so non-essential belongings were left behind. My collection sits there as we wait to see what will happen .

Fortunately(?), when you live in DRCongo, evacuations are an almost expected reality of life. So, I implemented an ongoing contingency plan:
1) Photographing every specimen that comes off the spreading boards (in as best quality as I can muster).
2) Depositing the more interesting material at the African Butterfly Research Institute (or elsewhere) whenever possible.
3) Keeping all interesting (or semi-interesting) unset material in a single easy-to-pack sealed plastic container.
4) Keeping scientifically interesting material in a single box for quick & easy transfer to their own plastic container.

So, here I am safely in northern Congo (out of the red zone) with my unset specimens and a small container of material I planned on donating (mostly to someone who's working on a revision of Appias & Dixeia).

Immediately after eclosion, there might be a tiny amount of moisture on the surface of the scales. This could affect the wavelengths of light that constructive/destructively interfere, altering the colour we see, like the shifting rainbow on the surface of a soap bubble.

adamcotton wrote: Tue Mar 18, 2025 6:48 pm I seem to remember reading that males of O. priamus poseidon are orange immediately on emergence from the pupa, and turn green as the wings dry. Can anyone confirm this?

Adam.

I think you may be right Adam, in some cases. When I raised Cairn's birdwings, I do remember one having a reddish orange sheen over the green just after emergence. It soon disappeared once dry. I have seen a photo of this on the internet some time ago, and when I saw the photo it reminded me of what I had seen. I remember hoping it would retain this colour and be something very special, but alas, it soon disappeared. I just did an internet search looking for this photo which displayed this phenomenon, but I can't find it. I reared a number of males, and only recall seeing this once. Perhaps it only lasts for a few minutes during the drying and as they typically have their wings folded while drying, possibly it would only be visible if they were disturbed and opened their wings briefly.

Some things just might last forever. If you can get your data or photos on the internet, it'll be there a very long time.

Rob de Vos tells me that only the Malesian part of the butterflies have been digitized and photographed. And then only the ZMA Papilionidae, Pieridae and a small part of the Nymphalidae.

Well, collectors/explorers dit it.

Several mountains of New Guinea (especially in West Papua) would produce FOR SURE some new species if anyone is able to go and collect there : Foja Mountains, Wandammen Mts.
Some islands may still have some unknown full species but that's more dubious (Goodenough, ...).

To give you an example : the Foja Mts (not that far from Jayapura, but populated by an aggressive tribe + National Park) have been explored only twice by Henk van Mastrigt in the 2000s. He has spent very few days there. He has found 5 new Delias species. Delias cumanau for example : https://www.delias-butterflies.com/spec ... as-cumanau
Imagine being able to spend one year there... or to have a local catcher on place...

A very useful tool : the Naturalis Bioportal : https://bioportal.naturalis.nl/nl

Naturalis (Leiden Museum, Holland) has digitalised a large part of their butterfly collection.
It is very rich in historic specimens from former Dutch colonies (Indonesia, Papua...) and some other specimens. Very useful to see some rare species AND their collecting data.

An example with Delias clathrata, they have access to 15 specimens : https://bioportal.naturalis.nl/nl/resul ... perator=OR


A nice specimen caught by my friend Fred Gerrits

As discussed with Chuck in another topic, this is the kind of digitalization all big private collections should do too (yes, it takes time & money).

Check their database on your favourites genera.

Naturalis is on the way to fully digitalized their lep collection. I will create a dedicated topic about that.

You are right that it is a huge tasks and starting by rarities is a good idea.
I may hire someone to do it, to be sure it is done.

wollastoni wrote: Thu Mar 20, 2025 10:02 am One of my plan, before donating/selling my collection in the future, is totally "digitalizing" it. So that, all entomologists will be able to study it in the future.
Of course digitalizing about 10,000 specimens with their collecting label is a crazy amount of work... so I hope I will have the energy to do so.
And then a digital copy will be sent to all Delias collectors/specialists.

Food for thoughts for some of you maybe.

That had been my plan, really just a dream. It would take a thousand hours to do it. I really only "needed" to do about 30 drawers, but even that task is a couple hundred hours. So it never happened. I did get some of my proposed Papilio solstitius paratypes photographed and uploaded to iNat and BOLD, but even that took time.


Some institutions started the effort, though I don't know any that have kept up, and in some cases even the data that was online is now gone, probably when the funding dried up.

With something like Delias, the task is likely somewhat achieved as you've done- photo the important specimens. Uploading to InsectNet is great, but redundancy by uploading elsewhere (eg iNat) offers greater survivability of the data. There's plenty of Delias species that frankly we don't need any more photos of, so skip them and save time.

One of my plan, before donating/selling my collection in the future, is totally "digitalizing" it. So that, all entomologists will be able to study it in the future.
Of course digitalizing about 10,000 specimens with their collecting label is a crazy amount of work... so I hope I will have the energy to do so.
And then a digital copy will be sent to all Delias collectors/specialists.

Food for thoughts for some of you maybe.