Southern African Butterfly Conservation Assessment

Newsletter No. 1

29 June 2007

Dear Butterfly Net
 
Welcome to SABCA...the project that aims to determine the distribution and conservation priorities of all butterfly species in the Southern African region.
 
This is SABCA's first newsletter – you can expect to receive quarterly newsletters until the end of the project in March 2011, to keep you updated on exciting project developments.
 
SABCA is a partnership between three lead institutions: The South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), the Lepidopterists' Society of Africa (LepSoc) and the Avian Demography Unit (ADU, University of Cape Town).

SABCA was successfully launched on 14 May 2007, at the Pretoria Botanical Gardens. The launch was kindly hosted by the SANBI. The evening included short introductory presentations by each of the lead institutions: Kristal Maze (SANBI) highlighted the important contribution that SABCA would make to understanding South Africa's biodiversity and also handed over the final contracts to LepSoc and ADU, Herman Staude (LepSoc's president) expressed how excited LepSoc is to become involved and gave some interesting information on butterfly conservation, and Les Underhill (ADU's director) reflected on how SABCA came to be, going back to ADU's very first meeting with LepSoc in August 2004. Thereafter, an entertaining presentation was given by Steve Woodhall, a keen lepidopterist and butterfly photographer, where he gave us all a very good idea of the types of butterflies in different habitats in South Africa. Look out for his recently published "Field Guide to Butterflies of South Africa" where you will find lots of information and excellent photos on South Africa's butterflies.
 
Since then, it's been full steam ahead to get SABCA's three main activities going:
 
1) The data capture of butterfly records in existing museum and private collections.
2) Planning the field surveys and obtaining the necessary permits.
3) Developing the online Virtual Museum for photographic submissions.

Data capture

In all, there are about half a million records in existing museum and private collections that need to be added to the SABCA database, many of these still need to be digitized. Our data capturers will be kept very busy over the next few years! (The thermometer on the right will keep you updated with progress made in obtaining this data. Currently, zero records are in the SABCA database - the database is still under development.)
 
SABCA is collaborating with three museums which hold the largest collections of South African butterflies: the Transvaal Museum (~100 000), the South African Museum (~14 000) and the Natural History Museum in the UK (~80 000). We thank these museums for agreeing to contribute their data to SABCA. Without their keen collaboration SABCA would not be able to meet its objectives.
 
SABCA is also working closely with LepSoc members in obtaining data from private collections. Data in private collections are very valuable to the project, and we will be most grateful to those members who will contribute their data to the project. Most private records also need to be digitized. There are various options available to collection owners on how to proceed with the data capture. Please contact me for further information.

Already, one team in the Western Cape has made great strides in the data capturing process: Dr Jonathan Ball and his collection curator Mr Tony Brinkman. Jonathan is a busy radiologist. He has been a keen lepidopterist/entomologist for 51 years and heads the Western Cape branch of LepSoc. He managed to make time for a BSc (Hons) in Nature Conservation and a MSc (Conservation Ecology) on aspects of the Red Listing/conservation of butterflies in South Africa. The latter was recently completed at the University of Stellenbosch (cum laude). He is presently engaged in studying for a PhD in entomology (involving taxonomy, phylogeography and conservation) through the University of Pretoria. His large butterfly collection includes the recent acquisition of the Wykeham/Dickson and Dave Edge collections. With such a large number of specimens to curate at "Ball Hall", Jonathan employs the expertise of curator Tony. Tony has been a keen lepidopterist for 35 years, but finds many other insect orders equally interesting. His favourite butterfly group is the Hesperid (skipper) family; he has the largest Afro-Tropical collection in southern Africa. This is of great scientific value considering that there is a state of flux over some of the taxonomy of this family. The past month Tony has been working flat-out on Jonathan's collection (with his wife Jenny helping out at times), aiming to complete the recording of label information by mid August. To date he has recorded the data for about 60% of the butterfly collection. Most of this information is in a notebook and will be forwarded to our data capturers here at UCT for digitization. The enthusiastic collaboration of Jonathan and Tony is greatly appreciated, and we hope they have set a precedent for other collection owners.

Field surveys

The butterfly season starts in August, and SABCA aims to begin its field surveys then. Accredited LepSoc members will be responsible for SABCA's field surveys across the entire South Africa, including protected areas. Field surveys will be guided by gap analysis. Gap analysis highlights those areas where very little is known on the butterflies there. Preliminary gap analysis has indicated that many gaps fall within the Northern Cape Province. Currently, collecting permits are being applied for all provinces through the provincial Nature Conservation permitting authorities as well as SANParks. As soon as permits are issued field work will begin. There may be opportunities for volunteers to join survey teams on field expeditions.
 

Virtual Museum

This exciting activity has proved to be very popular amongst the public with the reptile atlas (SARCA - click here to see the reptile atlas virtual museum), and some interesting discoveries have been made. SABCA will have its own online virtual museum. What is a virtual museum? Members of the public submit photographic records of butterflies (or any life stage, e.g. caterpillars, pupae) to SABCA by email, together with specific information. The submission is placed online in the virtual museum. A panel of expert lepidopterists' will identify the records. Records and their identification can be viewed online by anyone.
 
Please note: The information that must be submitted by email with your photos has to be in the format as presented in the example below! Otherwise our computer programme, which was developed by ADU's IT expert Rene Navarro, cannot read the information automatically. Use the template exactly as it is (copy and pasted into your email), including everything from [begin] .... to ....[end], and only replace the information that is outside of the square brackets (please note, for those of you who have already submitted photos, the template has been updated, please use this new format in future):
 
Example:
 
[begin]
[SABCA]
[observer name] Botha W.
[coordinates latitude] 24 34 13 S
[coordinates longitude] 27 23 42 E
[locality] farm Doornhoek; Thabazimbi district.
[closest town] Thabazimbi
[province] Limpopo Province
[country] South Africa
[year] 2005
[month] 08
[day] 27
[number of photos] 2
[notes] There were many butterflies of this type flying about, and they were feeding on honeysuckle. It was overcast.
[end]
 
Detailed instructions are on this website: public participation guidelines, please read these before submitting your photos.
 
SABCA's virtual museum is currently under development, with the aim to have it up and running in the next few weeks (you will be notified). So once the virtual museum is in operation, make sure to visit the site to find out what butterfly species you photographed! Photographic submissions are already being accepted. Currently, 27 photographic records have been submitted. SABCA would like to thank the following people for their first exciting contributions:
 
K Drummond-Hay: 9 records, including the very first submission!
B Erni & R Altwegg: 9 records
SW Evans: 5 records
S Kuyper, FG Visser, G Nichols, G Brooks: 1 record each
 

THANK YOU! Keep the photos coming!
 
So, SABCA is progressing very well. Thank you for your interest and participation!
 
Silvia Mecenero
SABCA Project Coordinator
Email: