March 2010
Dear Butterfly Net
Only one year of SABCA remains...it's going to be a very busy time.
1st Butterfly Census Weekend, 24-25 April 2010
South Africa's very first Butterfly Census Weekend is taking place in less than a month's time, from 24-25 April 2010. This is an exciting event and we would like to encourage you ALL to participate! So far, 13 teams have registered...please join us to make this first census a great success!
For more details and rules, please go here: http://sabca.adu.org.za/bcw.php
There are beginner and expert categories. Lists and pamphlets of the most common species in each province are available on our website (http://sabca.adu.org.za/bcw_pamphlets.php)
Remember to register your team before the event: Click here to register.. If you're unable to put together a team of 3 or more, then you may participate as a team of one or two.
Please note: This 1st BCW is experimental and the outcome will help us assess what will and will not work for future BCWs. So please give it a bash, even if you find the protocol hard to follow, and then give us feedback on how you found it. All feedback (positive and negative) will be most valuable!!
Biodiversity Expo, Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens, Cape Town, 25-28 March 2010
The Animal Demography Unit (where SABCA is based) had a stand at the Biodiversity Expo, which was visited by many scholars as well as members of the public.
SABCA presentation, 20 February 2010
The Highlands Wilderness had their AGM and LepSoc member Justin Bode managed to give a SABCA presentation.
The virtual museum has received close to 12 300 photographic records. Thank you to those of you who have made so many contributions. The competition is now closed (as of midnight, 31 March 2010) and the winners will be announced as soon as we're able to get through all the photo IDs (this may take a while as we have received many photos, so we ask you to please be patient).
We still have many gaps for the Northern Cape, North West and Free State provinces, as well as Lesotho and Swaziland! Please help us fill in these gaps:
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(1) In the coverage map below, please target the quarter degree grid squares which are blank, i.e. those squares that do NOT have a blue dot (blue dot = virtual museum record) or an orange square (orange = non-virtual museum record, either from a collection or field survey). Only 61% of the quarter degree grid squares in the atlas region have data, leaving 39% as blank squares, our gaps. We need you to help us fill these gaps. (Please click here to find out what is a quarter degree grid square) |
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(NB: this is a real time coverage map.) |
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(2) In the species richness map below, please target the quarter degree grid squares which are NOT purple in colour. For these non-purple squares we do not have enough records of the different species that occur there, i.e. they are currently species-poor squares. We need your help to improve the species counts (richness) for these cells. So, when you are at a locality, please try get photos of as many of the different species that occur there, which may mean that you would have to spend some time looking around to survey the area properly. |
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(NB: this is a real time species richness map.) |
SABCA would like to thank the following citizen scientists for their contributions during the past three months - some of the most recent submissions have not been processed yet and thus have not been considered here (see previous newsletters for previous contributions):
Here follows a small selection of interesting records or great photos received recently, as determined by our ID expert panel:
 Very good record of rare butterfly. RH Taylor Euryphura achlys Mottled-green nymph |
 Good record. J & Y Bode Ornipholidotos peucetia penningtoni Large glasswing |
 Good record. IC & A Sharp Coeliades anchises anchises One-pip policeman |
 Good record. J & Y Bode Colotis erone Coast purple tip |
 Rare form salaami. IC & A Sharp Papilio dardanus cenea Mocker swallowtail |
 Nice photo.. MD & EJ Galpin Lepidochrysops asteris Brilliant blue |
 Partial melanism. J & Y Bode Acraea horta Garden acraea |
 Nice photo & record. J & Y Bode Orachrysops niobe Brenton blue |
 Nice photo. P Webb Cigaritis natalensis Natal bar |
 Nice photo. GH Thomson Graphium policenes policenes Small striped swordtail |
 Good record. MD & EJ Galpin Kedestes chaka Shaka's ranger |
 Good record. J & Y Bode Graphium colonna Mamba swordtail |
The total number of records from historical collections uploaded into the SABCA database now stands at about 161 000 (this does not include virtual museum and field survey records). Our priority at the moment is to get all museum data uploaded before tackling the final processing of private collections. The latest batch of records uploaded come from the Transvaal, National, Durban Natural Science, East London and Albany Museums, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife and research data from the University of KZN. Thank you to all institutions which have contributed data to SABCA!
The next few months, up until May 2010, will see us uploading tens of thousands more data records so that we can meet our target (more likely 300 000 instead of 450 000). The pressure is on to meet the May deadline! Thereafter we have a few months to finalise the distribution maps so that our authors can complete their species assessments by October 2010. Once the assessments are done, our editors will be hard at work to finalise the product (Red Data Book and Atlas) by March 2011.
Laurenda van Breda, SABCA's last remaining data technician and who has been with us since April 2008, has reached the end of her contract with us. We'd like to thank Laurenda for all her many, many hours spent bent over butterfly draws, reading tiny writing on labels and putting this information onto computer - a job well done! She has also helped greatly with database processing and other odd jobs such as helping out with exhibitions. Laurenda has always been enthusiastic about SABCA and we wish her all the very best for her future career.
During the first three months of this year, Laurenda helped digitise LepSoc member Dave McDermott's private collection in Johannesburg. Laurenda also popped by the Transvaal Museum to help out with the many queries on the database. Upon her return to Cape Town, she was based at Butterfly World near Stellenbosch, to digitise the Gordon Fraser-Grant collection. This was the last collection digitised for SABCA.
Steering Committee meeting
SABCA's 5th SteerCo meeting took place in Pretoria in mid March. It was the first time that all members were present at one of these meetings. Progress was discussed and strict deadlines were set for the final year of SABCA, to ensure that all deliverables will be met by the end of March 2011.
SABCA conservation assessments: Author's workshop
In mid March, authors of the species conservation assessments gave up a precious long weekend to attend an author's workshop at the University of Pretoria. The venue was kindly sponsored by the Department of Electrical, Electronic & Computer Engineering. Mr Willem van Jaarsveld, an instructor within the department, went out of his way to make us all feel comfortable and to ensure that the workshop ran very smoothly - Thank you Willem for your assistance and kindness! The authors (all LepSoc members) worked very hard on their assessments during the weekend and much progress was made. Thank you to these LepSoc members for all their hard work, which is all done on a voluntary basis, and enthusiasm.
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 (left to right) Bennie Coetzer, Andre Coetzer, Mark Williams, Adrian Armstrong, Dave Edge, Silvia Mecenero, Ernest Pringle, Jeremy Dobson, Steve Woodhall, Graham Henning, Reinier Terblanche |
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Virtual museum encounters
Chris Willis, one of our regular contributors to the virtual museum, sent us the following picture of a robber fly killing a Lydenburg Opal in Verlorenvlei Nature Reserve near Dullstroom in Mpumalanga. And, he also photographed a record at a mountain called Swartwitpensbokfonteinberge in the North West Province - this is probably the longest single place names submitted to the VM to date.
Wild Flowers book of the Limpopo Valley
A book "Wild Flowers of the Limpopo Valley", by Retha van der Walt, has recently been published, which may come useful for those of you who wish to find out more about butterfly host/food plants. For more information, please click here
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