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| Erik with his first-ever wild-caught butterfly, a Papilio demodocus |
and Oskar Brattstrom:
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| Oskar in typical pose and attire |
The aim of our trip was to capture live females of Papilio dardanus (the most interesting butterfly in the world), along with various Bicyclus species. The trip came out of a workshop held in Ghana on Afrotropical Lepidoptera research. There, Oskar and I met several extraordinarily interested members of the Lepidopterists' Society of Africa (seriously, go there and join), among them Bennie and Andre Coetzer who, after hearing about the butterfly projects in Cambridge (and over many beers) insisted that we visit them in South Africa and they would show us a site "where you could pick the butterflies off the trees with your fingers."
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| |Andre (far left) and Bennie (next to Andre) Coetzer in Ghana |
Upon arriving in Johannesburg, and picking up our loyal Josephine from Avis, we were treated to some incredibly warm hospitality from the Coetzer's, before striking out for Limpopo. After a braai (and a little too much fine Windhoek draft) at Nwanedi resort, it was time to get into the field! Our hosts had talked up Mphaphuli (our field site) quite a lot, but we were happy to see it didn't disappoint!
Aside from an absence of Bicyclus ena, all the other species we were hoping for were present in abundance, although, given the goals of Erik and I of establishing cultures of butterflies in the UK, there was a slight lack of females (in butterflies, it is usual to observe an excess of males in the field, given the shy and cautious behaviour of female butterflies). Oskar, seeking only pheromone samples, completed his fieldwork rapidly.
Keeping the butterflies alive in our accommodation proved to be a little trickier, however. I settled on a regimen of twice-a-day feeding of all captive swallowtails, and leaving them in cages at the field site wherever possible. Despite the high mortality of captured swallowtails (not that surprising given their short life expectancy as adults), I was able to get many many eggs by putting cages with mated females onto host plants.
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| Quenching the thirst of butterflies and scientists alike |
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| Hand-pairing of Papilio dardanus |
Mphaphuli proved so productive that we were able to give ourselves a day to see some other zoology in the Kruger National Park:
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| Oskar's camera is way better than mine |
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| Too too funny to not include. |
After packing up and heading home, it did indeed prove possible to get some livestock established in the UK. I'll try and persuade Erik to write something about the Bicyclus, but from my point of view, although only a minority of the eggs I had hatched, enough larvae have survived to do some crosses and I have eggs again (one generation out from the wild)!
The only minor downside from the trip was that one day after returning to the UK, I started to develop symptoms of African tick-bite fever.
In conclusion, the trip was a roaring success and I owe a great deal of thanks to Oskar, Erik, LepSoc Africa and the Coetzer family.
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| "I hate my job" |
