Welcome to May's Newsletter!

After a slow start to the year in the Lowveld areas of South Africa, butterfly emergences picked up considerably in April. Also, there has been quite a bit of progress with the butterfly centre (refer to page 9).Good news is that a large batch of Aloeides and Thestor DNA samples that I submitted to Pasi Sihvonen last year have been barcoded. Unfortunately, I haven’t had an opportunity to assess these results yet – further updates to the Aloeides and Thestor Projects will be included in July’s newsletter.

Welcome to September’s newsletter!

September marks the start of the prime butterfly time on the Highveld, so it’s time to dust off your nets and recharge your cameras. Let’s hope for a great butterfly season!Mark Williams is in hospital and has been unable to proof-read this edition of ABN, so there may be an unusual number of spelling mistakes, misidentifications, or tortured punctuation – please bear with me!

Welcome to November’s newsletter!

Locally, the butterfly-season has got off to a solid if unspectacular start; we’ve recorded reasonable species-lists on the Highveld, although abundance has been generally low. A couple of ongoing African Butterfly News (ABN) features came to an end in September, so you may be pleased to see that this edition of the newsletter is a little shorter than in recent months!

Welcome to July’s newsletter!

There isn’t too much happening locally butterfly-wise, although there is still plenty of news to report on. Among other things, the Aloeides and Thestor barcodes received from Pasi Sihvonen in April have been evaluated and the preliminary results are included later in this newsletter.

Welcome to March’s newsletter!

A significant development for LepSoc Africa is the commencement of work on our butterfly centre: not the grand scheme at Magaliesburg unfortunately, but a more modest undertaking at André Coetzer’s property near Hekpoort in North West Province. Further details on page 3. We have two new series starting this month: “Tom’s Butterfly ID Guides” by Thomas Desloges (p. 18) and “A Fantastic Safari” by Alf and Neville Curle (p. 49). Also, Reinier Terblanche is introducing a new project - African Butterfly Migrations (p. 11).