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Species Index |
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Stunning photos of 800+ butterflies & moths worldwide.
Comprehensive guide to anatomy, ecology, evolution, habitats,
lifecycle, taxonomy, photography.
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Welcome to
learnaboutbutterflies.com
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learnaboutbutterflies.com is
a constantly expanding website, recognised internationally as the most complete and authoritative on-line resource dealing
with Lepidoptera worldwide. It aims to promote the conservation of
butterflies, moths and their habitats; to illustrate a representative selection of the world's
18,000 butterfly species, and to provide detailed, accurate
information about all aspects of the lives of these beautiful and
fascinating creatures. |
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photographs, text,
diagrams & design
© Adrian Hoskins |
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Ithomia terra,
Peru
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Worldwide, 50,000 square miles of rainforest is deforested
every year.
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Tropical deforestation accounts for 20 percent of
global carbon emissions.
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Every second a slice of rainforest the size of a
football field is destroyed.
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Every day 86,400 football fields of rainforest are
destroyed.
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Every year 31 million football fields of
rainforest are destroyed.
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Rainforests
are home to over
50 percent of the world's plant and animal life.
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A typical 5 square
mile area of Amazon rainforest supports 1,500
flowering plants, 750 species of tree, 450 species
of bird, and 500 species of butterfly.
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More than
10,000 square miles of Amazon
rainforest is burnt down every year to make way for cattle pastures. The
nutrient-poor
pastures are only capable of supporting very low
densities of cattle. Every dry season the pastures are set
alight to promote new grass growth and destroy cattle parasites.
The fires
rage uncontrolled, spreading into further areas of forest.
Deforested areas are much hotter and drier than the rainforests,
so the average temperature of the whole Amazonian
region rises, and humidity falls even more dramatically, causing major changes in the vegetation structure,
and greatly reducing biodiversity
even in protected areas.
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The information presented on
this website is based on 50 years of extensive personal observation
of butterflies in their habitats by Adrian Hoskins, supplemented by data
collated from reference books, and from professional
biologists, taxonomists and ecologists. In order to make the
articles more readable I have dispensed with source
references on the individual pages, but these include
such eminent international authorities as Bernard
d'Abrera, Andrew Neild, Robert Robbins,
Jorge Bizzaro,
Curtis Callaghan, Gerardo Lamas, Jason Hall,
Keith
Willmott, Maurizio Bollino, Pat Haynes,
Stéphane Attal,
Ronald Brabant, Martin Honey, Kevin Tuck,
Szabolcs Safian, Jean-Marc Gayman, Torben Larsen,
Michael Parsons
and Bernard Hermíer to whom I express my
sincere gratitude.
I would also like to express my thanks to
Matthew Oates and Jeremy Thomas whose knowledge of the
ecology of British butterflies first inspired me to take a deeper
interest in the subject, and to my many lepidopterist friends including Steve
Meredith, Tony Hoare, Peter Bruce-Jones,
Colin Baker, Doris Ashby, Pete Eeles and Martin
Warren for the many shared
pleasures on our various field trips and expeditions. Last and by
no means least, I thank my lovely partner Emily Halsey who
joins me on many of my field trips and tours, and works so hard
helping me to identify the moths which we discover on our trips to
Amazon and elsewhere. |
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I would like to express
my
thanks to
Bernard &
Lucilla d'Abrera for their
generous donation of 11 volumes of "Butterflies
of the World", an indispensable series of immense value as
a tool for the identification of species photographed for this
website.
My thanks
go also to Colin Baker for his
generous
donation of computer software, and to Tony Hoare who
kindly donated a copy of Willmott's "The Genus
Adelpha" to the library.
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