For the first time, March’s newsletter has broken the 100 page barrier! While I appreciate that reading the entire document is now a fairly onerous undertaking, I believe we should all embrace the volume of news being generated in the field of African butterflies; this is a big story and it needs to be told!

Welcome to November’s newsletter!In South Africa at least, the butterfly season is in full swing, and we have a full schedule of news, scientific articles, and trip-reports in this newsletter.Over the weekend of 2 and 3 October, LepSoc Africa hosted its Annual Conference and General Meeting, which for the first time, showcased both “live” and “virtual” presenters and audience. While we will undoubtably be able to make the live / virtual interactions slicker in future, I believe the system worked really well and we will adopt a similar formula in future: our Conference will be accessible to all LepSoc Africa members, wherever you may live in the world.

Welcome to September’s newsletter!Following a really cold winter (at least here on the Highveld) it’s time to dust off the nets and cameras and to get out into the field! Butterflies haven’t really started emerging in numbers yet, but here’s hoping we have great season.A reminder that LepSoc Africa will hold our Conference and Annual General Meeting over the weekend of Saturday 2 and Sunday 3 October 2021. Refer to the notification below.

Welcome to July’s newsletter!July’s newsletter is the 30th edition of African Butterfly News: ABN celebrates its fifth birthday! Since the first newsletter was first published in September 2016, there have been more than 1 700 articles (180 authors) consisting of about 1 870 pages - in excess of one page of African Butterfly News for every single day during the past five years.Keeping track of what’s happening in the world of African butterflies is a fairly daunting task, but I‘m happy to do this as I believe it is an essential part of LepSoc Africa’s services. In future however I won’t be trawling Facebook looking for appropriate articles or photographs - if anyone has news or photos, or sees something in the media that may be of interest to our members, please email me or post the item on one of the LepSoc Africa WhatsApp pages.Thanks to everyone who has contributed photographs or articles over this period and especially to Steve Collins who tries to weed out misidentifications and Mark Williams who proof-reads every word on every page prior to the newsletter’s circulation.Despite being mid-winter in South Africa, this edition of ABN still contains more than 100 pages.

Welcome to May’s newsletter!The current butterfly season is coming to an end in South Africa, but many of our members have been very active in the last couple of months; May’s newsletter represents another bumper edition – thanks to all contributors!