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The Jewel Butterflies. A monograph of the lycaenid genus Hypochrysops (expected 2024)
ISBN: 978-0-9542045-3-2
Authors: John Tennent & Chris Müller
Due publication 2024 – Price to be advised
Vanuatu is an archipelago of more than 80 islands in the southwest Pacific, stretching some 1,300 kilometres in a north/south chain. Despite being young in geological terms, the rugged interior of the larger islands, combined with the islands’ isolation, provide conditions ideal for rapid speciation. All 86 butterfly species and subspecies occurring in Vanuatu are illustrated in full colour; with many habitat photographs. Information is provided on habitats, larval host-plants (where known), and island distribution. Two species and 26 subspecies (30%) are endemic to the New Hebrides Archipelago; many are illustrated for the first time.
NB. This has not been widely available through booksellers, for two reasons: (1) no discount was offered to booksellers because all proceeds were donated to charity; (2) 600 copies were donated gratis to the Department of Education, Vanuatu Government; one copy for every school in the country.
It is offered here for the first time.
A completely new, and long overdue, treatment of the butterflies of the Maghreb states of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Both sexes of the 175 taxa occurring in the region are illustrated in full colour, some for the first time. Illustrations present the wide range of individual, sexual, geographical and seasonal variation as well as more than 120 unique butterflies of type status, many from the collections amassed by Charles Oberthür and Walter Rothschild, now in the Natural History Museum, London. Additionally, some of the actual butterflies sent to Linnaeus by the Swedish Consul in Algiers almost 275 years ago are illustrated for the first time.
Text includes an account of collecting in the area since the time of Linneaus. Detailed treatment of each species includes sections on description, habitat, host-plants, time of appearance, distribution/range and relevant taxonomic notes. New information on distribution and biology is included, together with a section on species erroneously recorded from North Africa.
A comprehensive gazetteer of place names is followed by the first concise bibliography for the region, listing almost 600 publications, extracted from 130 journals in eight languages.
The Solomon Islands, an archipelago of more than a thousand scattered islands, coral atolls and reefs, stretches over a thousand miles in the South Pacific Ocean, from the large island of Bougainville (geographically the most western island of the archipelago, but politically part of Papua New Guinea) to the tiny Polynesian outliers of Tikopia and Anuta in the east. Within this enormous and diverse range of islands lie many individual islands and island groups which individually support a high percentage of butterflies and other creatures found nowhere else on earth.
Despite a colonial history, the Solomons are understudied faunistically. The first specimen (a female) of one of the largest butterflies known, Ornithoptera victoriae, was shot by the naturalist John MacGillivray in December 1854 on the south coast of Guadalcanal, and for a period from the 1880s Charles Morrris Woodford, the first Resident Commissioner of the Solomon Islands Protectorate, braved head-hunters in order to collect butterflies and other natural history specimens. Since then few systematic studies have been carried out, and the importance of the islands as a significant area of endemism has only recently been appreciated.
This book represents the first and only account of 346 butterfly taxa recognised as occurring in the Solomon Islands and includes a wealth of previously unpublished information on distribution and systematics. More than 1,100 specimens, with many primary and secondary types, are illustrated life-sized in full colour, include many species and subspecies never illustrated before.
Treatment of each species and subspecies includes adult characteristics, flight/habitat, host-plants, distribution and other notes. Introductory sections place the Solomons and its butterflies in a biogeographic context and incorporate information on the geological origins and climate of the islands, early collectors, mimicry and endemism, with tabulated species lists for each island, maps and a comprehensive Solomons gazetteer.
The man who shot butterflies – Albert Stewart Meek – was one of the last great collectors of natural history specimens, literally thousands of which were new to science. Sponsored by Walter Rothschild and curators at Rothschild’s private museum at Tring, Meek was one of the most successful southwest Pacific explorers and adventurers of his time: a period of history when many missionaries, traders and gold miners died from fever or were killed and eaten by cannibals. A highly focused but modest man, Meek suffered unimaginable physical hardships in reaching parts of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands where no-one had been before. More than 100 of the undescribed species he collected now bear his name. He was one of natural history’s most successful explorers, discovering the world’s largest butterfly and many other birdwing butterflies as well as numerous birds and other creatures. Whilst others talked about their plans to travel to obscure and remote places, Meek actually did it … and then went the extra mile.
Little was generally known about Meek’s adventures or his private life. Until now. With a particular interest in the history of discovery, John Tennent describes events Meek experienced in both their historical context and from personal experience. Over two decades of his own research, Tennent stayed some three years in the forests of New Guinea and the Solomons in places Meek had visited a century before. This definitive and unique biography of Meek has a substantial autobiographical element. It draws freely on 500 pages of Meek’s letters written to Tring curators, archived in the Natural History Museum in London, as well as Meek’s personal photograph album now in the care of Sir David Attenborough.
In summary, this outstanding book covers the physical, intellectual and private life of a truly remarkable man, whose courage, endurance, organisational abilities and foibles combined to leave a unique and lasting legacy in the museums of the world. More than the numerous and diverse specimens – but inevitably because of them and the work Tring curators did with them – Meek helped to bequeath an understanding of the natural world that approaches the contribution of the founding fathers of biogeography. But this isn’t a dusty story about the past: it is an inspiration to all of us who are interested in adventure and what it is possible to achieve. To never give up. At last Albert Stewart Meek has a fitting monument in this book.The Man who Shot Butterflies is published in a limited print-run of only 500 copies – 603 pages with numerous colour pictures illustrating many of the butterflies, birds, beetles, shells, reptiles and other animals he collected. It chronicles Meek’s pioneering life and adventures, incorporating a substantial volume of previously unpublished information relating to subjects including his discovery of the remarkable (now extinct) Choiseul Pigeon, Microgoura meeki; and the acknowledged largest butterfly in the world, Ornithoptera alexandrae. Many of Meek’s discoveries are illustrated in colour.
