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Post by cabintom on Mar 5, 2016 11:17:03 GMT -8
In terms of the top three, I'm fairly confident you have 3 females of 3 different species. The key to identifying many/most Euphaedra is largely the shape of the subapical band. I believe: The top is E. eleus (sub-apical band is straight on the outer edge, also veins are obviously black, and there are no black spots in the FW cell). The middle is E. simplex (the sub-apical band is noticeably wider in space 4 than in 5 & 6) The bottom is E. hybrida (the shape of the sub-apical band in this species is fairly distinct) Here is a male E. hybrida:I have had much less personal experience with species from the groups to which the last 2 belong , so I don't want to say anything definitive. EDIT: Although I believe Hypanartia's suggestion that the bottom specimen is E. janetta is close, I'm not aware that the range of that species extends that far east in the DRC. At any rate, that specimen to me, would seem to be a male.
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Post by cabintom on Feb 10, 2016 7:39:33 GMT -8
Having next to no knowledge of butterflies outside of Africa... this looks remarkably like a Belenois... So I'd suggest that it might be Belenois java, as that's the only species of Belenois not found in Africa.
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Post by cabintom on Feb 10, 2016 7:20:29 GMT -8
While the American media machine would likely be found guilty of over hyping many issues, this isn't its only issue. I would point out that it's quite amazingly self-centered. It's true, you all help a whole lot (more charitable donations per capita than anywhere else), but you aren't the only ones helping (far from it) and you're definitely not always the first on the scene (for example see: www.bbc.com/news/health-29680393 & www.cbc.ca/news/health/ebola-vaccine-from-canada-seems-to-work-in-trial-in-guinea-who-1.3175101), and, in some cases, it can be argued that American intervention has actually led to an increase in problems and suffering in certain nations. I say this while not wishing to minimize what Americans have done and are doing globally (a lot). Heck, I work for a mission organization alongside several non-governmental organizations, so I've got first hand knowledge on the subject... but I have worked alongside far far more Germans here in NE D.R. Congo than I have any other ex-pat nationality, so there is that.
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Post by cabintom on Feb 4, 2016 9:58:16 GMT -8
I personally would love to include habitat information when labeling, but I'm not sure how to go about correctly & scientifically defining a habitat.
For example how would I define the habitat that is my yard and surrounding neighbourhood? I live in a city of 1 million people, but we've only got a 1km stretch of asphalt. I have a rather large yard, though not much of a garden, and most of the plants that had previously been planted here aren't native. In the immediate surroundings there's a number of formerly cultivated and now overgrown fields. All this to say that because I'm a 10 min walk from downtown I want to say it's an urban habitat, but that conjures images of paved parking lots and whatnot...
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Post by cabintom on Feb 3, 2016 20:28:28 GMT -8
I received a box of papered specimens from Robert Ducarme. How do I label these when I spread them? He paid a collector to go catch them for his collection, but the specimens were never actually part of it, and the collectors are only in it for the income and have little knowledge on what they're collecting beyond the fact that they must have made some wonderful observations over the years.
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Post by cabintom on Jan 16, 2016 20:31:09 GMT -8
I can't wait to spot my first wild Papilio zalmoxis, and to actually net a Papilio antimachus. I'm also on the look out for Melanitis ansorgei, the various Euxanthe species, a number of different Charaxes, Euptera, Pseudacraea, Epitola, Theclinae in general... there's a couple of groups of Mylothris species I need to build better series of... Papilio echerioides nioka... Pseudaletis... etc.
There's lots to be discovered here!
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Post by cabintom on Jan 8, 2016 4:57:44 GMT -8
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Post by cabintom on Jan 8, 2016 4:46:49 GMT -8
Wow, even the antennae are visible!
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Post by cabintom on Jan 7, 2016 21:00:24 GMT -8
I'm in central Africa and although I had a male Hypolimnas misippus in my bait trap yesterday, it's the first one I've caught that way (for context, I've been running that particular trap day and night since mid November, and H. misippus is a very common species here... I also have H. anthedon flying around the yard). So, if bait traps work for them, I don't think bananas are the right bait.
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Post by cabintom on Dec 21, 2015 9:31:00 GMT -8
Whoa, things are getting a bit out of hand here...
First of all, thank you John for your interjection. Although it wasn't particularly needed, I do appreciate that you were wanting to be helpful.
Secondly, Mr. Brou, the quality of your specimen processing has not been in doubt, it's the process itself that I'm curious about, as such, I hope that you would accept to answer a few more questions (I am often short on time and am wondering how I might do things more efficiently)...
Are you emptying each of the traps on a daily basis? Or are your daily hauls just averages from over a period of days? And how long does it take you to sort through what has been captured in each trap? I assume that with your expertise and experience you can easily spot the more important specimens, but I imagine that still takes time given that there would be (on average) over 30 000 insects in each trap. And, lastly, do you have any advice for quickly but properly setting specimens? It seems to take me around 10 minutes to spread a butterfly or moth, but the quality is not always where I would like it to be (and definitely not there if I do go anymore quickly). Are you able to spread your specimens more quickly than this and still maintain the quality? Or do you find it wiser and necessary to take a bit more time?
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Post by cabintom on Dec 20, 2015 21:15:17 GMT -8
Cabintom, I typically only spread 100 or less examples from my daily collections (keeping only the rarest, best quality, and most scientifically valuable specimens). My wife assist me in accomplishing all of these daily issues. And I have run traps for 46 years in Louisiana, 33 years here at my current home property. I have taken on my best 24-hour collecting period about 34,000,000 insects. Did I count them all, no that is an estimated figure based upon analysis of the weight of specimens. How do you both find enough time in one day? I mean sorting through 400+ traps of captures every day must take many hours (or are not all the traps employed at once?)... and, at least for me, I might be able to spread 10 specimens in an hour... though I guess with some more practice I might be able to double that, though I'd be concerned with the quality of the results... and then there's the time required for affixing labels, placing in drawers, etc.
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Post by cabintom on Dec 20, 2015 14:44:15 GMT -8
For 46 years, I have collected hundreds of billions of insects here on my rural home property using my inventory of 400+ insect traps, and I often have 10 or more Cornell drawers of expertly pinned, spread, labeled, and determined specimens of the same e.g., moth or beetle or other insect species. I collect primarily for the scientific knowledge gained that no one else has ever researched or previously documented or published upon. At this location, my automatically operated traps have collected 24-hrs daily and continuously for the past 33 years year round. A few questions to help me wrap my head around the numbers you're throwing out here. Your collecting is quite incredibly proliferate! How many insects are you spreading on a daily basis? How do you process the 12+ million insects you're collecting every day? (and I'm assuming this is a low estimate of the number, given that "hundreds of billions" could be a lot more than 200 000 000 000, and that you've been running the light traps for only 33 of the past 46 years.) I assume the vast majority of that is catch & release, am I correct? Do you employ any staff? In regards to your last post, unfortunately my internet here is terrible and I was unable to download any of those pdfs since that website is awfully slow to load. I was quite interested to see some of the results of your work.
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Post by cabintom on Dec 20, 2015 3:15:56 GMT -8
I often have 10 or more Cornell drawers of expertly pinned, spread, labeled, and determined specimens of the same e.g., moth or beetle or other insect species. As a lay-man myself, I'm curious as to what benefit is granted by having so many drawers of the same species? Are you looking for morphological changes over time?
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Post by cabintom on Dec 7, 2015 21:15:13 GMT -8
I once stood practically in the middle of a safari ant column while trying to figure out where a particular butterfly had flown off to... I wasn't standing there for long.
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Post by cabintom on Nov 15, 2015 12:06:14 GMT -8
Thanks a lot Clark for your words ! It has been a tough week-end... I have lost a colleague, he was 30 year old... My sincerest condolences...
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